Redefining Perceptions of Insanity
by Aurilia
Summary: Pre-series AU: In Sam's sophomore year at Stanford, the Zombie Apocalypse brings his education to a screeching halt. Rated for language, gore, and violence. Not slash.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by Max Brooks; various publishers including, but not limited to, Three Rivers Press, Crown Publishing Group, and Random House, Inc. This story is also based on characters and situations created and owned by the writers, producers, et al of the television show 'Supernatural', including, but not limited to, the CW network and Eric Kripke. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, internet persona, or other being, living or dead, is completely coincidental and unintentional unless otherwise noted.

**A/N:** As anyone who knows me in real life can attest, I have a serious love of zombies. Books, film, computer games – it's all good. When 'Supernatural' did their zombie episode (2.04 – Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things), I found myself somewhat disappointed. I know they try to make each of their villains have their own personal spin, but… The zombie in that show was disappointing; not a _true_ zombie (come on, one of the ironclad rules of zombiedom is that a head-shot wastes the fuckers!). Later, when they did episode 2.09 (Croatoan), I was a little more satisfied, but still disappointed in the overall lack of good old-fashioned, traditional, American, Romero-style zombies. So, I decided to write my own 'Supernatural' zombie story. The zombies I'll be using are the ones Max Brooks describes in his books World War Z and The Zombie Survival Guide, which in turn are based on the zombies used in Romero's string of zombie movies (_Night of the Living Dead_, _Dawn of the Dead_, _Day of the Dead_, and _Land of the Dead_; see also the zombies from the _Resident Evil_ franchise). For those of you who haven't read these books, don't worry; I'll be explaining as I go along.

One last note before I let you loose into the story: This tale is going to be completely AU. It's going to start while Sam's at Stanford, before he met Jessica. I wish I could remember the title/author of one of the SPN stories I read wherein Sam was at Stanford and had to deal with a traditional zombie uprising, but it's completely slipped my mind. It was a one-shot story, and I hope that if the author of said story reads this, they won't be angry with me for expanding on a terrific idea.

This story is rated M for language, gore, and violence. Happy reading!

* * *

**Redefining Perceptions of Insanity**

**Chapter One**

The incessant moaning was really starting to grate on Sam's nerves. His iPod didn't do much to drown out the noise, not if he was supposed to be listening for any breaches in their barricades. Sighing, he gave up on the idea of music for the time being and pocketed the MP3 player. It was odd that no one had yet asked him how he managed to keep the batteries for his cell, iPod, and laptop all charged when the power had been out for more than a week, but what else could he reasonably expect from the five people who shared their isolated existence with Sam and his roommate? They weren't exactly the brightest bunch of people.

With the exception of Sam's roommate (and Sam himself, of course), most of them were only in college because of athletic scholarships – or, in the case of Heidi, there simply because her daddy was one of the professors. Sam didn't understand it; he'd met Professor Sorenson and the man was highly intelligent, he didn't get how his daughter could be so freaking _clueless_. Joe was skating by with a 2.5 GPA on his basketball scholarship. Mark wasn't even doing _that_ well, what with his 1.9; he'd admitted to Sam that he'd only accepted the football scholarship because he had wanted out of the tiny town in which he'd grown up in North Dakota. Before the proverbial shit had hit the fan, Mark had been planning on dropping out at the end of the year and transferring to a community college in order to pursue his first love – auto mechanics. Miguel was attending on a baseball scholarship, and of the three jocks, Sam was pretty sure that he was the only one who had a brain rattling around inside his skull, but since he didn't talk all that much, Sam couldn't be sure. The last of the people who shared space with Sam and his roommate was Martha, one of the members of the custodial crew for the campus. She was in that hard-to-place age category between thirty-five and sixty, with iron-gray hair, sharp eyesight, and a wicked tongue. Sam was reasonably sure that Martha was the only reason that the kids were behaving and he resolved to thank her with a steak dinner if they managed to get out of this mess alive.

He wished that Dean and his dad would hurry up and arrive. He was more than just a little tired of babysitting the jocks, dodging Heidi's half-assed attempts to get him to sleep with her, and he was thoroughly _sick_ of all the _goddamned_ moaning. His roommate did little to alleviate the boredom, working nonstop on his own computer. With each day that sluggishly passed by, the roomie was starting to look more and more deranged. Sam was almost positive that one day he and the others would wake up to find that Brooks had done something totally psychotic, like try to eat his computer or something.

Which brought Sam's thoughts back around to the matter of his batteries. His roommate had a solar generator that he hung outside their window. Of course, the standoffish geek wouldn't consent to sharing his resource, and so Sam had improvised. There was a small solar-powered weather monitoring station on the roof of the dorm – one of those little combination temperature, barometric pressure, and wind-speed/direction meters that radioed the information to the National Weather Service – and Sam hijacked the power supply for his own purposes. His training with electronic security systems wasn't precisely the best foundation for getting the solar cells to work for him, but it was a damn sight better than nothing. Besides, he knew how to research, and one of the rooms two floors below them had yielded a cache of assorted electronics manuals scattered around a half-built (or maybe it had been half-demolished) desktop PC whose tower was fully long enough that, had it been standing on the floor, would have reached all the way to Sam's waist. Sam's pirated solar generator might not be as sleek as his roommate's army-surplus one, nor did it have quite the same output, but it served well enough that his laptop charged fully in about five hours, his cell took about three, and the iPod, of course, was dependant on the computer.

His cell buzzed impatiently in the jacket pocket on the other side from the one wherein Sam had stashed his MP3 player. Sam pulled it out and glanced at the screen. He let out a small sigh of relief and flipped it open. "Dean? Where the _hell_ are you?"

Dean's end of the connection was a little grainy, and there was a lot of background noise. "Fuck, Sammy. I've been tryin' to get through for the last hour. What the _fuck _is up with every two-bit whore and her mother cloggin' up the lines? Anyway, there's been a slight change of plan. The traffic comin' out of San Fran is nightmarish – Dad turned the truck around and is headin' out to Joshua's; he wants us to meet him there. I'm gonna stash the car, see if I can't make better time on foot."

"No! Don't try to come in on foot! They've got the damn place pretty much surrounded. Before sunset, I tried to get a head count from the roof. There's gotta be nearly five hundred of them by now."

"Damnit, Sammy, I don't see as I've got any other options just now. I'll try to drive as close as I can, but if the traffic is like this the whole way in… Look, just sit tight. I'll think of something. You have any luck findin' a radio?"

"Not yet, but I haven't searched the first floor. Wanna wait until daylight to do that."

"You sure that's a good idea, Sammy?"

Sam sighed, "Like you said, I'm not seeing a whole lot of other options, Dean. But… This _is_ what we do, yeah? I'll be fine."

A static-laden chuckle sparked over the connection, "Thought you quit hunting?"

"Yeah, yeah – I thought so, too. It's like the punch line to some cosmic joke about my life."

"Whatever, Sammy. Be careful and I'll try to call when I'm closer to your position."

"And I'll do likewise if I find that radio."

"Oh, and Sammy?"

"What?"

"Take one of those meatheads with you; you never know when you'll need a distraction."

Sam snorted out an involuntary huff of amusement, "I'll do that, jerk."

"You'd better, bitch," Dean replied, ending the call.

"Hurry, Dean," Sam whispered to the phone before tucking it back into his pocket.

* * *

The primary benefit to having been raised on the road was that Sam didn't own much. Even after living in only two places the last year – his freshman dorm room and a small apartment for the summer – he still owned only one duffle of clothes, two boxes of books, his backpack, and his computer. Sure, he had a handful of assorted mementos, including the wickedly curved blade Dean had given him for his seventeenth birthday, but nothing too large to hide in among his clothes and books. Sam was all moved in to his sophomore dorm before his new roommate had even shown up.

All Sam knew about his roomie for the year was his name, Brooks Vanderhaven, that he was responsible for securing a three-person room for just the two of them, and that he was a biology major. Sam had tried calling him a couple of times over the summer, but had reached only busy signals and answering machines. He didn't know what his roommate even looked like – the fourth and final piece of information he had received from the register's office was that Brooks had transferred from Oklahoma State. Sam had been meaning to go online to see what he could find out about his roommate, but he had never gotten around to it; his summer job, spending time with his freshman roommate, Dan, and taking summer classes always seemed more important.

Sam had just finished pinning the photographs he owned – the one of his mom and dad, and one he'd snapped of Dean a couple of years earlier – to a corner of the corkboard that hung above his desk, taking care that the thumbtacks didn't actually damage the photos, when the door to the dorm room opened. A tanned face with serious brown eyes, short black hair, a prominent nose, and thin lips poked in. "Samuel Winchester?"

Sam smiled a little, nodding. "Yeah, just Sam though."

"Brooks Vanderhaven," the guy replied. "You done unpacking?"

"Yeah."

"Wanna give me a hand?"

"Sure," Sam replied and crossed the room. After pulling open the dorm door, he found that Brooks was almost his exact same height, maybe a half an inch shorter and not nearly as broad through the chest and shoulders; in short, he looked like a walking beanpole. The hallway was crowded with boxes and bags and small pieces of furniture belonging to the students still moving in. "Which ones are yours?"

"Still downstairs in the truck," Brooks replied, heading for the elevator at the end of the hall. While waiting for a blonde in a football jersey and his equally large, muscle-bound companion to unload a hideously ugly brown plaid sofa, Brooks asked, "So, Sam. You a messy person?"

Sam shook his head, "Not really. You?"

Brooks snorted, "Not hardly. According to the register's, you're pre-law?"

"Yeah. And you're a bio major?"

Brooks ignored the question in favor of asking his own. "You prefer studying at the library or in the dorm?"

"Wherever seems best," Sam replied with a slight shrug of his shoulders. He still wasn't quite sure what to think of his new roommate.

"Any allergies?" Brooks asked as the sofa finally got out of the way.

"What?" It was official, Sam was confused.

"I said, do you have any allergies?" Brooks stepped into the elevator, carefully enunciating every syllable as though talking to a small child.

"No," Sam followed him into the lift, "but why does it matter?"

"How about being sick? You tend to get sick easy or not?" Brooks pressed the button to take them to the ground floor.

"What does that have to do with anything?"

Brooks finally looked over at Sam. "Look, I was supposed to have that triple to myself, but the register's office wouldn't let me. They also said that I couldn't have a double to myself because their allotment of double-rooms to single residents was already reached by the upper years. I run experiments that need nearly constant monitoring; otherwise I'd just use the labs here. I need to make sure that your presence isn't going to compromise the integrity of these experiments."

"What kind of experiments?"

Brooks merely looked at Sam.

* * *

Dean split his attention evenly between navigating the choked streets of suburbia – it was no use going on the freeway, it'd been clogged solid for nearly four days – and the three radio receivers sitting on the passenger seat. One of them was tuned to the police band, one to the military, and the last was constantly scanning the civilian frequencies. They gave him a heads-up as to what to expect along his planned route; from the living, at any rate.

It was coming up on four in the morning, and Dean had just crossed into Palo Alto, and he suddenly realized that he'd not seen a single walking corpse for the better part of twenty minutes. It was unnerving. The zombies had been more-or-less a constant since Las Vegas. Out in the desert, it was only one or two every ten miles or so, but closer in to civilization, it had gotten to the point that he couldn't look in any direction without seeing at least three of the fuckers. Honestly, it made him wish he had an extra pair of eyeballs on the back of his head, not to mention the fact that he had to physically restrain himself from just wasting all the ones he saw – not that that was a bad idea, mind, just that he only had about sixty total rounds for his pistols, and that was an even split between silver and consecrated iron. He wasn't about to waste the 'good stuff' on a stupid, shambling, slimy ex-human when a normal bullet would do the job just fine. He had hoped that he'd come across a gun store by now. In fact, he had driven past three in the last twelve hours, but they all looked to have been severely looted already.

"Where the hell did they all go?" Dean whispered, peering through the dark. His headlights didn't stretch very far; fog had descended on the bay area shortly after sunset and had just grown thicker the closer it got to sunrise.

A crackle of static from the military band radio nearly made Dean jump out of his skin. "Unit Kilo-Foxtrot-Three-Niner-Five to command, command do you copy?"

"This is command, go ahead."

"San Fran's a wash, recommend fall back to sector seven-one-six and regroup, over."

"Agreed, unit Kilo-Foxtrot-Three-Niner-Five, fall back to sector seven-one-six. Choppers are on their way. Extraction at 0500. Copy?"

"Copy that."

"Fuck," Dean swore and turned off the radio. The military was pulling out of the bay area. "This _can't_ be good."

Dean pulled the Impala to a stop in the middle of a confluence of three side streets and peered through the murky haze of the fog to find out where he was. Once he managed to make out the lettering on the street sign, he checked his position on one of the computer-printout maps that were scattered under the radio receivers. "Okay, so that's six more blocks that way," Dean muttered to himself, tracing his route with a penlight. "And then turn left, follow this for about two miles and the college is right there." Though their dad had stopped by the school a couple of times over the last twenty months, Dean hadn't gone with him. In all honesty, Dean hadn't even found out about John's little side-trips until just a few days earlier, and by then it no longer mattered.

Without warning, there was a sudden banging on the driver's side window. Dean jumped and twisted around. "There you are, you son of a bitch." Some of the growing apprehension Dean had been feeling dissipated when he caught sight of his 'visitor'.

The zombie had once been a pretty redhead, complete with long legs, a big bust, and perfect teeth. Dean knew this last bit because they were currently on display for the world to see; her lips were long gone. A thick river of blood and gore trailed down from her mouth, along what remained of her neck, and plastered her strappy little tank-top to her chest. Dean huffed out a little sigh. "At least I know I ain't slippin'. Didn't hear you 'cause you got nothin' left to moan _with_." The zombie's throat had been ripped out, vocal chords and all, and Dean could see shiny bits of bone and gristle among the strings of muscle and sinew.

For all that he hated using the 'good stuff' on a zombie, he also knew that he didn't have much choice in the matter until and unless he could find some normal bullets. Dean also knew that one zombie tended to attract more, and unless he wanted to put himself on the menu for breakfast, he should probably take care of the problem before it got worse. _Besides, she's mucking up my baby_. He scowled at the smears of congealed blood on his window and picked up his new favorite pistol – the ever-so-beautiful stainless steel Colt M1911A1 with the mother-of-pearl grips and engraved barrel, found in a pawnshop just outside of Reno two months and eight hunts before the world started coming apart at the seams – as he started cranking the window open. He had the gun in position before the ex-human could realize there was now a weakness in the defenses surrounding its meal. Two quick shots downed the former woman, the .45 caliber silver slugs splattering her brain across the wet asphalt, and Dean quickly threw the car back into 'drive' before the sound could attract any more walking dead. The gun went back into its place, resting comfortably on Dean's left thigh, which, unbeknownst to Dean, was bouncing a little with nervous restlessness.

* * *

It was less than a week before Sam realized that his roommate for the year was completely, totally _insane_. Once Brooks had seen how little Sam actually owned, he had taken over the room, leaving Sam with barely enough space in which to cram his bed, desk, and chair. Two days after moving in – the first day of classes, actually – Sam returned during the two hour break he had between Art History 101 and Legal Craft and Moral Institutions to find that a full three quarters of the dorm room was now off-limits.

Brooks hadn't come right out and said as much, but the fact that it was encased in plastic was as good a clue-by-four as Sam had ever seen, and that didn't even take into consideration the bright biohazard warning printed on the door flap. The plastic was thick, nearly rubbery, but crystal clear. Within the plastic, Brooks had set up a couple of workbenches, thus clarifying the purpose behind the majority of long metal poles Sam had helped schlep into their sixth-floor room. There were innumerable gadgets and gizmos, only a few of which Sam could identify, such as a small refrigerator, a centrifuge, three different microscopes, and an incubator. There were no less than three computers, and Sam was almost certain that the screen at the farthest side of the plastic room-within-a-room was an EEG. The dorm possessed three windows, but only one of which now served its original function. The other two had machinery sticking out of them. Eventually, Sam learned that one of the windows brought in air from outside – after thoroughly filtering it – and the second one vented the 'lab', likewise after a thorough run through a filtering system.

Sam had tried to get transferred to a different room, but that idea was shot down nearly before it had a chance to be brought to the register's office. Basically, since Sam was there on a full scholastic scholarship, he didn't have much say in who his roommate was, particularly since he didn't have an alternate roommate in mind. So Sam tried his best to ignore Brooks' more irritating habits, and to get used to the constant symphony of assorted humming noises that emanated from the machines in the 'lab'.

A month into the fall term of his sophomore year, Sam managed to find a day where he didn't need to be working on anything in particular and he didn't need to be at work. He figured it was probably a sign to take the time to look into his roomie's life a little. Taking his laptop to the library, Sam logged into the WiFi and started doing what he did best – gathering information. The only thing that was different about this time when compared with all the times he'd gathered similar information in the past was that this time the topic of his search was still among the living.

The information was intriguing. Sam discovered that Brooks – who had apparently been named with his mother's maiden name – was the latest addition to a family with strong ties to the government. His grandfather, Jan Vanderhaven, was listed as belonging to the CDC from its inception in 1946 until 1962, when the man apparently died in the field, working in Africa. Jan's wife had died in childbirth; of her three sons, one had died in Korea, one had gone MIA just three months later (and was still listed as MIA), and the third had followed in Jan's footsteps and began working for the CDC in 1976. The weird part was that Sam couldn't find too much on Brooks or his father. He discovered that the CDC itself was footing Brooks' tuition – something Sam hadn't known was possible. The oddest thing was the fact that nearly all mentions of either Brooks or his father linked into a webpage which had _six_ password protections on it; not even the FBI database was _that_ protected.

Having gotten nearly nowhere with his research, Sam turned his energy into seeing if he could remotely access Brooks' primary computer. His roommate spent far more time working on it than doing anything else, so Sam assumed that there had to be something worthwhile knowing stored on the hard drive. If anyone knew precisely what Sam was up to, they likely would have questioned his sanity, but then again, no one really understood how Sam had been raised, either. Paranoia was a necessary survival trait when hunting the supernatural, and by the time Sam started school at Stanford, it had been ingrained to the point that he didn't realize that normal folk didn't worry when they didn't know everything there was to know about someone sharing their living space.

Waiting for his laptop to establish the connection to Brooks' computer, Sam recalled that it had been really easy to get to know his roommate from freshman year. Dan liked to talk, and seemed intimidated by silence. Before three days had passed, Sam had learned Dan's life story. The only reason they weren't roommates again this year was because Dan was living off-campus with his fiancé, a spunky little blonde girl who had more energy than six people needed.

The laptop beeped, pulling Sam from his memories. Sam did the computer equivalent of thumbing through Brooks' hard drive, looking for anything worthwhile. The first thing he found was that Brooks seemed to like the harshest heavy-metal music ever recorded. His music file contained Drowning Pool, Disturbed, System of a Down, Cradle of Filth, and the harder music by Metallica, in addition to innumerable bands of which Sam had never heard before. He also, strangely enough, seemed to have the entirety of Johnny Cash's repertoire.

Moving on from the music, Sam eventually located a cache of text files, which weren't organized by name but by file size. Double-clicking on the first in the list brought up page after page of chemical formulae, annotated with a series of dates and notes. Reading through the notes, Sam realized that this file had to be Brooks' research journal. It took about half an hour of reading before Sam understood that his roommate was working on a vaccine for a virus Sam had never heard of before. A quick search online yielded no results, and so Sam decided that 'solanum' had to be a code-name for something else.

Exiting out of the research journal, Sam went on to read through a couple of other files. He stumbled across a saved email which made mention of a 'strategic guide for all levels of outbreak' that had been forwarded from Brooks' father to him for proofing. Sam quickly scanned down the list of files and soon spotted the file mentioned. The file opened as an Adobe .pdf and contained a military-style booklet of roughly a hundred pages. It detailed, to Sam's incredulity, how to deal with _zombie_ outbreaks, ranging from a small-scale infestation of a couple of dozen all the way up to an end-of-the-world scenario. Sam would have thought it a joke were it not for the fact that government agencies lacked a sense of humor.

The booklet also only dealt with walking dead created by that 'solanum' virus; it didn't touch on what to do if the zombies in question were the result of any of the hundreds of necromantic summoning rituals which existed. _Then again,_ Sam thought, closing the file and setting about removing any evidence he'd been poking around on Brooks' computer, _those aren't exactly areas the CDC has any knowledge of. It's not their area, so-to-speak._

His curiosity and slight paranoia sated for the time-being, Sam collected his computer and his backpack and set out for supper. Now knowing what Brooks was working on, he was even less inclined to explore the plastic-encased portion of their room.

* * *

"How's it going?" Martha asked, startling Sam a little.

Sam shrugged from his position on the landing of the staircase. "It's been… Not _quiet_, but nothing to worry about."

Martha lowered herself to sit next to Sam. "You know, I'm a little surprised you're taking this as well as you are. The others, they've each come to me and had a break-down session. Your roommate… Hell, he's too busy throwing all his energy into trying to stop all this. But you… You just seem to be taking this all in stride." Sam let out a little laugh. "Can I ask why?"

"Why not?" Sam let out a breath. "It's not like innocence is going to mean much in the coming years, and normal… Hell, we'll be lucky to see 'normal' make a reappearance in our lifetimes. What does _normal_ and _innocent_ mean when there are hundreds of zombies shambling about outside?"

"I don't follow."

Sam laughed again, "Didn't expect you to. You see, Martha, it's like this: When I was six months old, some_thing_ killed my mother. Cut her open, pinned her to the ceiling, and set her on fire." Seeing that Martha was about to interrupt, Sam held up a hand to forestall her questions. "Hold that thought, Martha. After Mom died, it was just me and my older brother, Dean, and our dad. Dad got it in his head to track down and kill the thing that killed Mom. He raised me and Dean on the road, going from town to town, hunting out the evil that feeds off of humanity. Before you chalk this up as insanity on my part, I suggest you take a look outside and redefine your perception of insanity. I was raised to hunt evil – vengeful spirits, poltergeists, werewolves, demons, shapeshifters. Pretty much anything you've ever heard about in stories. Most of those 'imaginary' creatures _are_ real, even if their reputed weaknesses aren't exactly the same as in the stories. As you can imagine, my family doesn't come right out and tell everyone 'We're hunters of the supernatural!' No one would have believed us. However, what does keeping the family secret mean when the world's gone stark raving mad? Those things outside? Yeah, they're just the latest bit of weirdness in my totally fucked-up life."

"Oh," was all that Martha seemed capable of saying. The pair sat in companionable silence for several minutes before Martha sighed and rested her head on the cool metal of the guardrail. "So…"

"Hmm?"

"If you know about stuff like this, what do we do to get out of here? We're running low on food and now that the power's been off so long, it won't be much longer before the water stops flowing."

"I know. My brother's coming, though. He should be here soon. Speaking of which, I told him I'd look for a CB radio. Honestly, I'm surprised we managed to hang onto cell reception as long as we have."

Martha shook her head, "I'm not. The military would want to keep those lines open, but you're half-right. I was listening to my radio," she tapped her breast pocket which contained a little AM/FM receiver, "and the evacuation listing's been replaced. The military's pulling out of the bay area. When they go, I doubt that cell reception will remain more than a couple of hours afterwards."

"Don't you have a CB in your van?"

Martha nodded, "Yes, but I don't see how you would be able to get to it."

Sam frowned, mulling over the problem in his head. "You normally park on the back side of the dorm, right? Next to the entrance to the basement?"

"That's right."

"What's in the basement?"

Martha shrugged, "Not a whole lot. There's a storage room down there, no idea what might be squirreled away in it. The hot water heater for the dorm and the furnace… Um, the supply closet. That's about it."

"What kind of supplies?"

"The normal kind, I suppose. Toilet paper and paper towels. Cleaning solvents. Brooms, mops, that kind of thing."

"What chemicals did you use?"

"I don't know their names," she replied. "Why's it matter?"

Sam grinned, "Because some cleaning solvents are flammable. Others just need a little tweaking and they become explosive."

"You know this from your dad?"

Sam let out a hearty chuckle, "Hell, no. I did a science fair project on the dangers of common household chemicals in eighth grade. You'd be surprised at just how much stuff people keep under their kitchen sinks can be used to manufacture explosions. Actually, insofar as non-lethal explosions are concerned, have you ever seen what happens when you drop a Mentos in a bottle of Diet Coke?"

* * *

Dean was starting to get frustrated. His planned route had to be abandoned; a delivery truck and a SUV blocked one of the intersections he had to go through in order to get to the college. He pulled to a stop, put the Impala in reverse, and backed up to an alley. He was able to get around the wreck, but he didn't get far. There was the remains of an army barricade the next intersection over, and it wasn't a saw-horse-and-sandbag job – there were numerous K-rails, those concrete dividers that most people only saw when they were used to control traffic flow during freeway construction, blocking both the main road and the alleyways.

"Fuck." Dean wanted to hit something. Instead, he took the time to turn the car around before shutting it off. He pocketed the computer printout of the map of the area after marking the location of the car on it, turned off the radio receivers after tucking the civilian-band one into an inner pocket, and then peered out into the gray twilight of predawn.

He didn't see any undead nearby, so he climbed out of the car, his pistol in one hand, and the keys in his other. He hurried around to the trunk and opened it, his head constantly twisting around, scanning for potential problems. His ears were straining to hear any nearby telltale moans, but that was a joke. He was close enough to the school that the plethora of moaning from the campus zombies was a hindrance. He shivered a little at the thought that Sammy was caught, _trapped_, in the middle of all that.

Snagging the two spare clips he had for his Colt, he quickly double-checked that they were loaded with the silver rounds. Though iron was cheaper, the silver rounds were easier to make, and what with the world teetering on the edge of total annihilation, the cost of silver was pretty much a moot point. He'd still rather have good old fashioned lead – who knew what they'd have to deal with in the future? Dean _so _wasn't looking forward to seeing what happened to a former werewolf in the current climate – but luck just hadn't been with him. The spare clips went into his outside, left hand pocket. Still scanning his surroundings, he was pretty sure he could take the time to top off the half-empty clip in the gun. Once that was done, he attached a machete to his belt, hoping that he wouldn't need it. If a zombie got that close, it was because he'd run out of ammo, and that just didn't bear thinking about.

Dean sighed a little, fighting against the urge to load himself down with more weapons, but knowing that doing so would just end up working against him; the added weight would limit his mobility. "What I wouldn't give for a flame-thrower right about now."

Shaking his head, he pocketed the keys to the Impala, and shut the trunk.

* * *

Sam followed Martha down into the 'basement' of the dorm. In reality, it was more a partially-subterranean ground floor than a real basement; the hill on which the dormitory was built covered the northern half of the floor, leaving the southern side exposed to a parking area. Though he'd never had cause to venture to this level of the building before, it was just what Sam had imagined it would be. A couple of interconnected open areas, housing the dorm's furnace, the massive hot-water heater – both of which were now ominously silent – and a large area cordoned off by floor-to-ceiling chain-link, packed tight with dorm furniture, cardboard cartons, and other assorted junk. Martha led the way to a door near the steel fire-doors which opened onto the parking lot.

"Well, Sam. Here it is," she unlocked the supply closet, and Sam trained his flashlight into the darkness within.

He grinned. "Jackpot," he muttered, and hurried forward to inspect his find.

"How so?" Martha asked.

Sam held up the sprayer, "Should I even ask _why_ there's a pesticide sprayer in a dorm?"

Martha shrugged, "Come on, Sam. You're smarter than that. First off, the school gets folks from all levels of financial ability. Secondly, most guys aren't that tidy. Roaches can be a major problem, so the school takes – took – preventative measures. Didn't you ever wonder why everyone had to leave the campus during the winter break? Or why only certain dorms were used during the summer term?"

"Makes sense," Sam allowed, before turning to investigate the shelves of plain, white industrial cleaning solvents.

"Anything there you can use?"

"Depends," Sam replied, quickly reading the labels on the bottles.

"On what?"

"On whether or not the school was still using traditional cleaners, or if they'd switched over to using the 'green' stuff."

"Green?"

"The environmentally-friendly, biodegradable junk that doesn't burn for shit." Sam's eyes lit up as he finished reading the label on a galleon-jug of glass cleanser. "Yahtzee."

"The window-cleaner?"

Sam nodded, "It's isopropyl alcohol. Kinda surprised you didn't use ammonia."

"We used to, but about six years ago, there was a kid who was deathly allergic to the stuff, he ended up having to be treated at the ER, so the school switched."

* * *

Halloween of Sam's sophomore year was only slightly less frustrating than the one the year before had been. The people he hung out with, _Friends, Sam. They're your friends_, knew he didn't really approve of the holiday, even though they didn't really know why, and so hadn't been bugging him about going to this costume party or that haunted house.

When the RA for Sam's floor – an art major in his last year – went through and hung Halloween decorations on everyone's door, Sam couldn't help himself – he tore down the piece of posterboard depicting a cartoonish graveyard with a pair of formless ghosts rising up from 'Sam' and 'Brooks' headstoned graves. He shredded the poster into pieces barely larger than a quarter. _Nope. Not gonna happen. Not gonna be something I hunted. Never. Nope. Nuh-huh. No way in hell. Hunting rule #100, if ya come to the end of it, ya don't leave nothin' behind that someone else'll have ta deal with._ The last thought echoed through Sam's head in Dean's voice. Still fending off the icy feel of gooseflesh, Sam disappeared into his room, crawled under the covers on his bed, and went to sleep. _I miss Dean_.

Two hours later, when Brooks returned from his last class of the day, he found the pile of confetti that was once the poster to their room. He'd noticed it when he'd stopped by to check on his experiments during his lunch break and had been meaning to take it down himself, but hadn't had the time. He had to wonder a little at why his roommate shredded the stupid thing; it was a rather extreme reaction to a childish drawing. He gathered up the scraps and left them in a pile on Sam's desk, complete with a sticky-note that sported a single question mark lying on top. Either Sam would answer the implied question or he wouldn't.

Sam woke from his nap about an hour later, feeling more drained and tired than when he'd laid down. Brooks was in his normal place, puttering about within his lab. He saw the note and poster shreds piled on his notebook on the desk and sighed. Though Brooks' lab area was well-lit, the lamps were all aimed in such a way that very little of that light made it to the area where their beds were crammed. Sam scooted back on his bed, resting his shoulders against the wall, and tucking his knees up under his elbows.

Brooks knew, he _always_ knew, when Sam was awake. Brooks was nothing if not observant, and he could tell when his roommate was asleep, just about to wake up, or merely lying there, pretending to be asleep. It was all in the details; a worry-line here, a catch in breathing there, muscular tension, REM, it all added up to form one conclusion or another. And so, it didn't startle him when Sam moved. It didn't startle him when he started speaking, either. Sure, it surprised him, but didn't _startle_ him – there _was_ a difference in the two reactions. He knew he hadn't gone out of his way to be nice to his roommate – he didn't get on well with people and he knew it – and after that first week had ended, Sam had seemed to quit trying to get to know him.

"Death isn't something you should joke about," Sam said, not really talking to Brooks, but trying to answer the question anyway. "Particularly not about the ghost side of things. And not in my family. Ever." Sam's voice trailed off for a couple of moments, long enough for Brooks to wonder if that was all, but then Sam started talking again. "Vengeful spirits, death omens – they're created from violent deaths. Murder, suicide. Sometimes, under the right – or would that be 'wrong'? – conditions, a particularly nasty accident can create them. They linger; they don't go on to whatever _after_ exists. They stick around and cause problems. Vengeful spirits tend to cause deaths, usually reenacting the circumstances of their own death. They want to hurt others they way they were hurt; they know nothing else. Their entire existence has been stripped down to pain and anger, and like an animal caught in a trap, they become violent, hurting anyone and everyone who comes within their grasp. Putting them out of their misery is an act of mercy. Forcing them to move on by destroying whatever links them to this world. My dad and my brother… For them, it's all about saving people, about keeping the innocents out of harm's way. They don't seem to get the fact that these ghosts used to be people, too. With lives of their own, hopes, dreams, goals… But something bad happened to them, and for whatever reason, they couldn't deal with it. Unfortunately, you can't reason with them, and so the only way is an act of force. I never really liked it, you know? I hated how we couldn't get them to understand that we were doing what we were doing for their own good, and by the time they understood, it was too late for talking anyway. At least, I _hope_ they eventually understood. I would hope that whatever pain they were in, whatever anger they carried, wouldn't follow them to… whatever's _after_. If it does, then what the fuck was I doing? But no, I'm not going to think about that. Ever. I'll keep my hopes because really, when all is said and done, that's just about the one thing that can keep you going when everything else is falling apart."

After Sam fell quiet once more, Brooks mulled over what his roommate had said. He may have been a scientist at heart, but with what he was working on… He understood what Sam meant about hope. He'd gone with his father on more than just a few missions, and for all that the virus they were hoping to eliminate was a natural thing – more than that, it was a _scientific_ thing – they were no closer to knowing the 'why' of it than they were when Brooks' grandfather first isolated the damn thing. They didn't know where it came from, or why no one seemed to be naturally immune to it. Exhaustive research revealed that mentions of outbreaks of solanum dated as far back as human history reached. When an outbreak was dealt with, particularly those more recently, where adequate quarantine measures could be taken, that should have spelled the end of the virus. But it kept cropping up. There could be a minor outbreak in Scandinavia, and the next year it would pop up in Siberia. It had no pattern. And so, the Vanderhavens found themselves to be in a gray area – they were scientists, sure, but they had to have hope and faith, too.

It never even crossed Brooks' mind to doubt what Sam had said about ghosts. That might have seemed strange, had an outsider been able to witness Sam's monologue, but then again, most outsiders didn't believe in zombies, either. Brooks was reasonably sure that things like ghosts and spirits – tales of which were too widespread to simply be wishful thinking or hysteria – were just one of those things which modern science hadn't gotten around to explaining yet. After all, there was a time when something as commonplace as a kidney transplant was the stuff of fiction.

The next morning, Allen Jones, the RA for the sixth floor of his dormitory, opened the door to his room to see a pile of confetti sitting on his welcome mat. Under the confetti was a single sheet of notebook paper sporting blocky capital letters done in thick, black marker which read, 'Death isn't funny.' Allen winced a little, but squared his shoulders. By the end of the day, the poster had been replaced with one that showed a pumpkin patch, and two of the pumpkins were carved to show Sam and Brooks' names.

* * *

**A/N2:** This story is what I've been working on when I should have been working on _All at Once_ and _Twice is Circumstance_. It's not finished (yet), but I do know where it's going (unlike AaO, which seems to want to go _everywhere_). It may be a while before my schedule clears enough for me to post another chapter, but I hope that this first installment intrigues readers enough that they'll stick around until it's done.

Remember to let me know if you enjoyed it or not (and if there was anything I need to fix). I know it's a bit of an odd style for me, what with bouncing back and forth between two points in time, but I'll say that this will only go on until the past segments meet up with the current timeline (the flashbacks of Sam's year in school will eventually circle back around and show everyone how he ended up on watch in that first segment, in other words).

_Rereads above note. Sigh. I should never do A/Ns when I'm tired._ Hope that all made sense; if not, lemme know, yeah?


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer:** This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by Max Brooks; various publishers including, but not limited to, Three Rivers Press, Crown Publishing Group, and Random House, Inc. This story is also based on characters and situations created and owned by the writers, producers, et al of the television show 'Supernatural', including, but not limited to, the CW network and Eric Kripke. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, internet persona, or other being, living or dead, is completely coincidental and unintentional unless otherwise noted.

**A/N:** I'm uploading this from a hotel in El Paso, TX (and it's pure luck that we managed to snag a hotel with a Wi-Fi), which is the reason its taking a bit longer than usual for me to update my other stuff. I won't be getting back home until sometime around the ninth or tenth, and once I get back, I actually have to pack (and re-pack) for our move. With luck, y'all will be able to get one more update for AaO and TiC before I'll be without internet for an unforeseeable amount of time. With that said, enjoy this chapter, and remember to let me know what you think!

Just a reminder: This tale is completely AU. It takes place while Sam's at Stanford, before he met Jessica.

Minor warning: Though I don't feel I do well with the genre, there is some light angst in this chapter.

This story is rated M for language, gore, and violence. Happy reading!

* * *

**Redefining Perceptions of Insanity**

**Chapter Two**

The closer Dean got to Stanford's campus, the more zombies he saw. It was getting harder and harder to avoid them.

All of Dean's senses were working overtime.

Though, at first glance, hearing wasn't helping any – what with the overabundance of infernal moaning coming from the campus – this wasn't the case. Sure, those moans made it harder to hear ones coming from nearby, but moaning wasn't the only noise the walking dead made. They still made, not precisely _footsteps_, but a shuffling, shambling noise when they moved, and if they were feeding – the mere thought of which made Dean gag – there were chewing and slurping noises. Both the slow shuffle and the slurping had given Dean a heads-up about a couple of seemingly deserted alleyways.

The fog was as hampering to his vision as the campus undead's moans were to his hearing. The fact that the sun was growing ever closer to the horizon didn't help. The added light made Dean want to rely on his sight more, but until the fog burned off, he still couldn't see more than fifty feet in any given direction. Add to that the fact that the light made it so Dean could see the air currents swirling through the ground-bound clouds and it had him nearly crawling out of his skin.

Though it was only late April, it wasn't at all cold. Unlike the last hunt Dean and his dad had gone on just before everything came to an abrupt and screeching halt, which had been in northern Minnesota (_Snow, they still had freakin' _snow_, for christsakes!_), though it was just as humid. Dean did have to admit, if only to himself, that he preferred warm and humid to frozen and humid – at least his face didn't feel like it was falling off. Regardless of the temperature, the short hairs on the back of Dean's neck were standing at attention, and his instincts were screaming at him that he was being watched, _stalked_, and had him imagining shadowy forms just out of sight.

He slunk along the streets, making sure to tread as lightly as his thick-soled work boots would allow, breathing slowly and evenly through both his mouth and nose. This helped keep his own breath from interfering with anything he might hear and also brought in his senses of taste and smell. Though usually only used in eating, both senses could help inform a human being about certain factors of their environment. Currently, Dean could smell sea air, smoke, and the all-too-familiar stench of decay and rot that left a filmy, cloying flavor on his tongue. Following his nose's advice, Dean skirted around a cherry-red minivan wrapped partly around a light pole. Had he stopped to peek inside the wrecked vehicle, he would have seen the remains of a seven year-old, still belted into her booster seat, entrails strewn around the interior like macabre party streamers, blood spray spattering every surface, and her once-blonde pigtailed head resting on the floorboards, snapping futilely at her own foot, just out of reach. He didn't stop, though, and for that he was granted one less nightmare.

Rounding a corner, Dean very nearly literally ran into one of those massive trucks that had a camo-colored canopy covering the bed; the kind of truck that was often shown hauling soldiers around the dunes of southern California in movies about wars in the Middle East. A faint taint in the air, nearly unnoticed on any level, but caught by Dean's subconscious, made him take a quick peek in the bed of the truck. It was half-filled with boxes, most of which had a light patina of blood sprayed over them.

Dean listened intently for a moment before climbing into the back of the truck, retrieving his Mini-Maglight from his pocket afterwards. Shining the light around revealed an arm, still wearing part of its army-issue sleeve, lying near one of the boxes, and two right feet, one still in its boot, clearly-gnawed bones sticking up out of the once-grey sock and heavy boot. Dean grimaced, let out a choked breath, and trained the flashlight beam on the boxes themselves. The first few he checked didn't hold anything he could use, but right _there_, just under a box of what claimed to be foodstuffs, was something that made Dean grin. "Yahtzee." It was a box of ammunition. More than that, it was a box of ammunition for standard, army-issue pistols. The only difference between an army-issue pistol and the one Dean had with him was that the army ones were blued steel with black grips, not stainless and mother-of-pearl. That scent Dean hadn't realized he'd noticed? Yeah, it was gunpowder.

He had a momentary twinge of conscious, a slight and practically insignificant wince of guilt for stealing from not just the dead, but dead _soldiers_, but his practical side soon had that irritating voice of morality gagged, bound, and shut back in its closet where it belonged.

A little more searching found a cache of magazines. It took Dean about fifteen minutes to load five of them from the stockpile of lead, all the time wondering if maybe there was another pistol nearby. Once he caught up to Sam, his brother would need a gun of his own, after all. He sighed and shook his head, he didn't need to waste any more time. As it stood, Sam was likely half-frantic in wondering just what was taking Dean so long.

* * *

It took three trips to haul all the two-gallon jugs of alcohol-based window cleaner up the seven flights of stairs to the rooms that the little survivor group had claimed. The fact that Sam's room was on the sixth floor had nothing to do with where everyone had decided to stay – if the building had had a seventh, eighth, or twentieth floor, they'd have stayed there.

Setting the pesticide sprayer on the floor outside his dorm room, Sam glanced at his watch. He shrugged a little, shared a small smile with Martha, and burst into the room wherein Mark, Miguel, and Joe slept. Heidi and Martha shared the room across the hall.

The three jocks startled awake, Mark coming-to with a frantic, "What? Did they get in?"

Sam shook his head, "Nope. It's just that it's time to rise and shine."

"You're a bastard, you know that?" Joe chimed in, yawning halfway through the sentence.

"I just thought you might want to get out of this damn building sometime today," Sam said with measured indifference. "I mean, it's a nice building, sure, but eventually those things _are_ gonna find a way in, and when they do, I'd rather not be here."

Miguel rubbed the last of the sleep from his eyes and asked, "What did you have in mind?"

"Well, I need as many glass bottles as the three of you can find and a couple of bed sheets. We'll also need some matches or a lighter, too," Sam explained.

Though he had his doubts about the mentality of his companions, they did manage to connect the dots. "Where'd ya find gas?" Mark asked, quickly pulling a pair of sneakers onto his feet.

"I didn't. Found some cleaners down in the basement that'll burn just as good, though."

An hour later, Sam had close to a hundred glass beer and wine-cooler bottles stacked haphazardly around the jocks' room – most of the bottles had come from Joe's room on the third floor. Privately, Sam was convinced that was probably the cause of Joe's poor grades, but put the thought out of his head. _It's not like grades matter anymore._ He'd just started ripping a sheet into small strips when his roommate – looking more like the things outside than usual – strode past the open door to the hall, glancing in as he went. Half a second later Brooks reappeared in the doorway. "Let me guess, you're making Molotovs?"

"Obviously," replied Sam. Martha had gone back to sleep after helping Sam bring the window cleaner upstairs. Joe had taken a box of textbooks up to the roof and was amusing himself with chucking them down on the massed zombies in the parking lot. Mark and Heidi were 'looking for useful stuff', which meant that they had probably gotten as far as the RA's room on the fifth floor – said RA'd had a queen-sized bed. Miguel was helping Sam.

Brooks blinked at Sam and the baseball player. "That isn't going to help, you know."

"How do you figure?" Miguel asked. It seemed like a good idea to him, never mind the fact that his experience with zombies was limited to having seen _Night of the Living Dead_ when he was thirteen. He hadn't even had a run-in with any real ones since he'd been laid out with a bad case of the flu during the week things went from normal to fucked.

"They don't react to pain," Brooks explained in a dry tone. "They show no instinctual fear of fire. So, you douse them with gas or alcohol or napalm and light them up – know what you end up with?" He met Sam's eyes, "A walking torch that _still_ wants to eat you." With that, Brooks left the doorway and continued down the hall to the bathroom.

Sam wanted to pound his head into the nearest wall. Instead, he sighed and stared up at the ceiling.

"What now?" Miguel asked.

Sam shook his head. "No freaking clue."

* * *

The majority of the fog burned off rapidly after the sun fully rose. Dean was able to make better time now that he could see what was coming long before it became a threat. He rounded a corner, the last between him and the campus, and stopped short.

There were _hundreds_ of the fuckers. No, strike that, there had to be close to a thousand – maybe even two – of the goddamned things choking the empty areas between the buildings, wandering aimlessly and uttering that _motherfucking _moan.

"Son of a _bitch_," was just about the only coherent thing Dean could say.

He honestly had no clue how the _hell_ he was going to get Sammy out of that mess. The moaning was so loud and constant, he couldn't _think_. And those _things_… They were all _people_ once. There was a man in a business suit that had probably cost more money than Dean had ever seen in his life, there was a kid – a _kid_, for christsakes! – in a pair of ripped up jeans. There was a woman who had likely been quite pretty in life, dragging herself along the ground, missing both feet and part of her left arm, the rusty maroon of her dry blood staining her white blouse and making darker spots on her navy skirt.

Dean had been denying his own horror at the situation, treating the retrieval of his brother like any other hunt, saving his emotional response to everything that had happened until both he and Sammy were somewhere safe, but his normal defense mechanism – bury and evade – shorted out on seeing the mass of walking dead in front of him. A seemingly insurmountable barrier of gnashing teeth and unending hunger who, nonetheless, had once been _people_. The very same people Dean had fought to save ever since he was big enough to take the kick from a shotgun. Waitresses and janitors and bank tellers and corporate execs. _What the fuck have I been doing? All those hunts… For what? This? _Children and bubble-gum snapping teens, grandmothers and socialites, nerds and jocks and Sammy was in the _middle_ of all that and…

A hand landed on Dean's shoulder, wrenching him from his somewhat panicky existentialist issues back to the here-and-now.

* * *

Sam stopped short as he was reaching for the doorknob to his and Brooks' room. He had been unaware that his roommate hadn't gone anywhere for the Thanksgiving holiday – Sam had just returned from sharing in the traditional turkey-and-stuffing at Dan's apartment. He knew Brooks was in the room because he could hear the bio-major arguing with someone. Since Sam couldn't hear the other end of the conversation, he assumed it was over the phone.

"Damn it, Dad! You've got to let me come with you!" a pause and then, "No, but 347-AXT shows promise." Another pause and a sigh, "But, Dad –" There was a lengthy space of dead air before Brooks spoke again, this time somewhat resigned and rather quieter than previously. "When are those fucking Moroccan peasants going to realize that just dumping them in the ocean isn't solving anything? It just causes more issues later on. Yeah, Dad, I know. Rat-testing's a go, if you want to get the clearance. The AXT strain definitely shows promise, at least in the bacterial cultures." Brooks chuckled lightly, "No sweat. I'll email the results when you get back. Speaking of, will I be getting a fresh sample? I'm running low, and you _know_ it doesn't replicate at a usable rate in the cultures. Okay. Yeah, see you at Christmas. Bye."

Sam wasn't completely sure what the conversation was about, but he could make a guess. His guess wouldn't be totally off the mark, either. Brooks' father was obviously heading out to deal with an outbreak of the virus Sam had read about in Brooks' files. Sam really didn't want to linger on the mental images associated with that though. Instead he slowly counted to fifty and entered the room. "Hey, Brooks. Thought you'd be heading home for the weekend?"

Brooks looked up from his computer and shook his head, "No, it's a stupid tradition if you ask me. Why do we need a special day to sit around stuffing ourselves silly while watching football? Don't most Americans do that _every_ day?"

Sam chuckled, "You might have something with that."

"And what of you? No uncomfortable dinners with distant relatives in your schedule this weekend?"

"No. Thanksgiving never was a big deal while I was growing up, other than it meant a four-day-break from school. Dad usually ended up taking me and my brother hunting if he thought we could be back before school started up again."

Brooks nodded to show he'd heard what Sam had to say, but didn't reply. On Sam's side of things, it was a little liberating to have someone know about what his family did. Not just someone who knew, but someone who could _understand_, even just a little bit, about how Sam had been raised. Sure, Sam'd had a lot of fun his freshman year living with Dan, but as much as he liked his former roommate, he had to admit he was more comfortable with Brooks than he ever had been with Dan.

Brooks didn't pressure him to talk about things like why he didn't go home for the holidays or why he never got mail from his family or even why he studied so much. Sure, his current roommate had a harsh and abrasive personality severely lacking in even the slightest semblance of polite people skills, but he knew when to leave well enough alone and didn't press where he wasn't welcome. In return, Sam didn't complain too much about Brooks' choice in music, and he'd rapidly gotten used to the presence of the lab and its assorted machinery; for all that Sam was a tall guy, he didn't really need _that_ much space, after all. The two of them weren't friends. In fact, Sam highly doubted that they could ever _be_ friends, but they were more than simple acquaintances.

Nearly a full month later, just when the campus was gearing up for the winter break, Sam overheard another telephone conversation between Brooks and his father. When the call ended, Brooks, in an out-of-character fit of anger, threw his cell as hard as he could against the wall, where it shattered on contact with the painted-over cinderblock. Brooks let out a heated string of words – Sam could only catch a couple of them. He had to force himself not to smile when he realized that his roommate apparently expressed his frustration by swearing in half a dozen different languages. "Problems?" Sam asked, setting his textbook down.

"Motherfucking Moroccan peasants!"

"Excuse me?"

Brooks angrily jerked his chair out from under his desk and sat, staring blankly at his main computer's screen saver. "The virus Dad and I work on tends to show in Morocco about once or twice every couple of years. We don't know why it shows there more often than anywhere else, it just does. Particularly this tiny fishing village on the coast. They've always managed to _take care_ of the problem themselves, by binding the reanimates and dumping them in the ocean. They don't seem to understand that their tradition simply pushes the problem off onto other countries. Anyway, they had another incident last month, but had already _taken care_ of it before Dad's team could get there. At least one of the reanimates have washed up in Portugal, and now they've got a Class Two outbreak on their hands. Unfortunately, they're not letting Dad's team in, so it's only a matter of time before it evolves to a Class Three. If they don't wake up and let the professionals handle this, we could be looking at a Class Four outbreak within six months."

Sam shivered. According to the information he'd read in Brooks computer all those weeks ago, a Class Four outbreak was better described as the end of the world.

Brooks sighed and ran a hand through his close-cropped hair. "There was _some_ good news to be had. Despite the cancellation of our Christmas plans, Dad managed to snag clearance for rat-testing."

* * *

Joe aimed and threw the organic chemistry text as hard as he could. It hit where he aimed, rocking the zombie back on its heels, but not downing it. The books just didn't have enough mass to crush their freaky skulls in – either that or they couldn't reach a high enough velocity to do enough damage to permanently down the fuckers. Joe chuckled, sunlight glinting off his teeth and making the contrast between the whiteness of his teeth and the darkness of his skin all the more striking. "I think I'm gettin' better at this," he said to himself.

"You know, talking to yourself is a sign of mental instability," Miguel called across the roof.

"Like you ain't talked to yourself before," Joe retorted, selecting an English literature anthology for his next throw. "When we gettin' outta here?"

Miguel shook his head and walked up next to Joe. "No clue. Vanderhaven said the Molotovs won't work."

Joe slung the book, watching as it arched through the air and struck a guy he was pretty sure had been in his Intro to Philosophy class during the first semester. "Great. Just fuckin' _peachy_. He say why?"

"Yeah. Said that since _they_," Miguel nodded towards the crowd of shambling zombies, "don't feel pain, if ya light 'em up, all you got is a 'walking torch that still wants to eat you'."

Despite himself, Joe laughed. "That geek always did have a way with words. Wasn't Winchester's family s'posed to come? Get us outta here?"

"Thought so, but he ain't said nothin' on it." Miguel peered over the low rail surrounding the rooftop. "Don't see how they're gonna get through all that, even if they did show."

Joe shook his head, "If his family's even half as intense as he can be, they'll find a way through."

Miguel picked up a book on C+ and flipped through it before snapping it closed, "Whacha mean?"

"It was last year. Bunch of us went down to Zeb's for some fun. Winchester was there, lookin' like someone'd just run over his dog. He musta had a helluva fake ID to get it past Zeb; he was just a freshman, ya know? Anyway, one of the local girls was there shootin' pool with her boyfriend. Really pretty blonde chick. I'd seen her in there a few times before. Knew she was still in high school, but I don't think Zeb gave a damn 'cause she only ever drank soda. She'd also gave a coupla drunks rides home before –"

"Are you gonna come to the point sometime today?"

"Why? You got somewhere you gotta be?"

Miguel laughed and chucked the computer book into the moaning mass below. "Go on."

"Anyway, that blonde girl was there with her boyfriend, and it was pretty obvious they were celebrating the chick's birthday. A coupla hours after me and my friends got there, she and the dude started bickering. Dunno what about. It got pretty heated and the boyfriend ended up slappin' the blonde. Winchester'd been at the bar, watching all this, and when that happened, he just came unglued. Jumped outta his seat like it was on fire. You don't really notice how tall that cat really is most of the time, what with how he slouches and stoops, but you could notice it that night. He went from depressed drunk to… Damn, it's hard to describe. It was like watchin' one of those friendly all-American family mutts that likes kids and pisses on the carpet when it gets excited suddenly decide that you're a threat. He grabbed the dude and held him a good three inches off the floor, said something to the guy that made him look sick, and then threw him – physically _threw_ that motherfucker – out the door. He stared at the door for a moment, and when he turned around, he was back to bein' that geek we know. He made sure the chick was okay and – get this – he _refused_ to let her buy him a drink. They were close enough I could hear his reason; he said he 'didn't do it for that'. He left a twenty on the bar, grabbed his jacket, and headed out. So, yeah. If his folks are even _half_ that intense, then yeah, I think they'll come through."

* * *

A week into Sam's second semester of his sophomore year, Brooks' laboratory became slightly noisier with the delivery of twenty white lab rats. It took less time for Sam to become acclimatized to the squeaking and random shuffling noises the rats made than it had for him to get used to the presence of the machinery Brooks used. Three days later, only four of the rats were still living – Brooks' control group – and another sixteen refilled the bank of small cages on the far wall of the room. It got to the point that Sam could very nearly set his watch by Brooks' rat deliveries. Every three days, sixteen new rats would take the place of the ones who had died in the name of science. Sam didn't know what Brooks did with the dead rats, but he hoped that it involved an appropriate amount of flames; the info he read on the virus Brooks was working with had said that fire completely destroyed it.

The continuing cycle of sixteen rats every three days lasted until the second week of February. On Wednesday, February 12, Brooks woke to the sound of his alarm clock at six in the morning, just as he did every day. Sam usually woke up at the same time, too, but if he'd been up late studying the night before, he would remain awake long enough to set his own alarm for an hour before whenever his first class was; or, if it happened to be a weekend, for two hours before he had to be at work.

On that Wednesday, Sam didn't have the chance to reset an alarm; Brooks had gotten up and checked his rats first thing. When he got to the middle of the upper row of cages, he let out a noise that was somewhere between an ecstatic whoop, a groan of frustration, and a resigned sigh. Sam couldn't help it, he had to ask. "What?"

"I got a survivor," Brooks replied, his voice a little muffled by the combined presence of the humming machinery and the thick plastic encasing the lab, "but none of the others in that batch survived."

"And that means…?"

"That means that I've got far more work ahead of me than previously anticipated." Brooks returned to the living area of the dorm room and booted up his computer. "There's no reason that the serum should have a hit-and-miss chance of success. Solanum is one hundred percent fatal; no one and nothing has a natural immunity. In finding a way to combat it, a cure would work completely or not at all, so one survivor in a test batch of four is problematical. It means that there's something going on that shouldn't even be possible."

Sam yawned and stretched, "Don't know what to tell you, man. But even one survivor in your experiments is a good thing, right?"

Brooks grinned, "That it is."

* * *

It was solely instinct which had Dean reacting the way he did. Between one heartbeat and the next, his body had reacted to the hand on his shoulder by drawing his gun up and spinning around. His mind took half a second longer to process the sensory input, but it did so before his finger could pull the trigger. A haggard-looking man in his mid-to-late forties, wearing a dirty white t-shirt and jeans, flinched back from Dean's sudden movement. "Shit," the man choked out, too startled to scream.

Dean blew out a shaky breath he hadn't been aware he'd been holding and lowered the gun. "Don't ever do that again," he warned.

"You don't wanna go that way," the man whispered, nodding in the direction of the ever-growing mass of zombies milling about on the Stanford campus. "They're all over the place down there."

As if Dean couldn't see that for himself. Dean returned his gaze to the campus. "I have to," he said, though it was obvious to the newcomer that he wasn't talking to him.

"Why? Got a death-wish or something?"

Dean shook his head, "My brother's down there."

The man tentatively reached up and tugged lightly on Dean's shoulder, "Come on, let's get out of here before they realize we're here." Dean resisted and the man continued, "Face it, no matter how good you are with that pistol, you're never gonna be able to get them all. You need a plan, and standing out here in the open's a good way to get yourself put on the menu."

_Have to admit, the dude's got a point._ Dean forcibly tore his gaze from the crowd of undead and looked over his shoulder at the guy. "Where to?"

As it turned out, the man was the captain of the local fire station and had refused to abandon his post until it was far too late for a rescue from outside. The station was pretty well barricaded from potential zombie attack, even if having to climb _up_ that damn pole was a pain in the ass – one of the things the guy had done was destroy the staircase to the second floor. Captain Just-Call-Me-Al Warren had ventured out into the community to scrounge up some food; it was pure dumb luck that he'd happened across Dean.

A couple of hours later, Dean startled awake from disturbing dreams on the firehouse's sofa. It took him several minutes to convince his brain to let him know where he was and what he was doing there. Al came through with a cup of hot coffee that had been brewed in a percolator on a camp stove; the caffeine convinced his brain cells to begin firing on all cylinders.

Over breakfast – cans of fruit cocktail and stale donuts – the fireman told his story. Dean mentally sighed on realizing that _everyone_ now had a 'story'. _This is gonna get old, I can tell already._ The fireman wrapped up his tale with the soon-to-be customary, "And what about you?"

"What about me _what_?"

"How'd ya get here?" Al clarified.

Dean shrugged, "Drove most of the way, then walked."

Al wrinkled his forehead in confusion, "But… Why?"

"I told ya already, my brother's at the school."

"How are you so sure that he isn't… Well, one of _them_?"

Dean speared the last chunk of… _Is that a peach? Pear? I know it's not a grape._ Not that it mattered; fruit cocktail all tasted the same. He chewed the unidentifiable fruit chunk before answering. "I talked to him just before the cell service crapped out this morning."

Al drained the coffee from his mug and asked, "How do you know he's still okay?"

_This guy's starting to piss me off._ Dean's eyes glinted in the dim light filtering through the heavily-curtained window. "Look," his voice mirrored his rise in temper, "he just _is_, okay? Sam's _okay_, but I still have to get him out of that damn dorm!" By the end, Dean was shouting.

Al winced a little, "Sorry, man, but–"

"No, I get it," Dean made a visible effort to calm himself. "Shit happens, and just lately it seems to be coming fast and hard and there's no end in sight. But my brother's okay, I just _know_ it."

"No, really, it wasn't any of my business, and I shouldn't have thought it was," Al got to his feet and deposited the coffee mugs in the kitchenette sink along with their forks. The empty cans were deposited in a rapidly-filling trash bag tied to a cupboard door handle. "So, your brother's trapped at the college. What building is he in?"

"Packard Dormitory," Dean replied, "there's him and six others holed up there."

Al nodded, "That's the new one, west end of the campus. Did you know the guy who designed it also designed four federal prisons?" Dean quirked an eyebrow at that and wondered if Sam had known that little detail. "Thought it was a good addition; nice and modern, you know? State-of-the-art sprinkler system, solid construction. Estimated burn time of fifteen hours, compared to the six for most of the older dorms and the four for most of the frat and sorority houses," Al sighed. "Never figured I'd ever have to answer a call _there_."

"And I never figured on having to see the end of the world by zombies," Dean snarked, though the sarcasm was slightly tempered with a cockeyed grin.

Al chuckled, "There is that. You said he's got six others with him?"

Dean nodded, "Yeah. His roommate, four other students, and one of the campus cleaning people."

Al's expression grew serious as he pulled aside the hideous brown checked curtain and stared outside. "I suppose we ought to go and get them out of there, shouldn't we? I mean, they can't stay there forever."

"I know. How're we gonna get to them though?" Dean sighed and ran a hand through his hair, idly noting that it was just about time for a trim. "'Cause, dude, I'm about _out_ of ideas."

Al shook his head, "I don't know, but we'll think of something."

* * *

Sam woke up at roughly four o'clock in the afternoon after about six hours of sleep. He still had absolutely no idea how to get to the CB in Martha's van, but he did have a rough idea as to what to do with at least _some_ of the window cleaner. He needed to relieve a little stress and he couldn't think of anything better than taking out some of his frustrations on the swarm outside.

Over the course of the next hour, he scavenged the parts he needed and found that the others – excepting Brooks, of course – were already out on the roof. Joe and Miguel were still chucking books at the zombies; sometime during the course of Sam's nap, Mark had joined them. Heidi sat cross-legged in the shade of the stairwell box, filing her nails. Martha was stretched out on a fold-up lounge reading Pet Sematary; the irony of such a choice of literature was not lost on Sam.

"What's all that?" Heidi asked as she nodded towards the box of what she thought was random junk.

The guys glanced over, as did Martha. Mark grinned, "I know what that's for."

Martha smiled to herself, she also knew what the plastic pipes and assorted whatnot would be used for; growing up, she had four older brothers, all of which liked to blow stuff up. Looking back, it was probably a good thing they had lived in Missouri, where things like firecrackers were legal, otherwise all five of them would have had lengthy juvie records.

"Care to share with the class?" Miguel chucked the last of their current supply of books over the roof edge.

"It's for a potato gun," Mark explained, looking first to Miguel and then to Sam. "Am I right?"

"But why would anyone want to shoot potatoes? Not that we've got any, but still!" Heidi went back to filing her nails. "You know, that sounds really good. A baked potato with butter and sour cream and chives and all those other things I really shouldn't have unless I want to ruin my diet…"

Sam restrained the urge to see if he could choke the stupid right out of her and sat the box down on the roof. "More of an empty-bottle gun, but you've got the right idea, Mark."

Joe grinned, "More like the one they built in _Tremors 3_."

Sam shrugged, "No idea – never saw that one." He started sorting out parts. A potato gun wasn't all that complicated and it didn't take long to have it built.

While he was setting it up for its first test-fire, with a little help from Mark, Mark mentioned, "When I was sixteen, my older sister taught me how to build these things. We once made one that launched pumpkins." He laughed at the memory. "Managed to send one nearly five hundred feet."

Miguel was watching them work on the gun. A half-smile surfaced on his face, "Sounds like you had way too much time on your hands if you ask me."

Mark nodded good-naturedly, "That we did, my friend. Lived out in the middle of _nowhere_. Nearest twenty-four hour gas station was almost thirty miles, and the nearest Cineplex was almost sixty."

The bottle-gun fired successfully, even though its projectiles canted slightly off to the left and made an odd whistling noise in flight. It didn't have a whole lot of force behind it, but there was enough that, after a couple of hours' worth of practice, Sam and Mark could position it and take down individual zombies. Before the sun touched the western horizon, there was a pile of thirty or so downed undead scattered amongst the moaning mass; each of which with a bottle-shaped indentation in their heads. A couple even had the bottles lodged neck-first through their temples.

* * *

The puzzle of the singular surviving rat in Brooks' tests nearly drove the bio-major completely insane. _Not that he had all that far to go in the first place,_ Sam mused one evening in early March while watching Brooks pace from one end of his lab to the other. The guy was even muttering to himself; Sam caught snippets of the ongoing monologue every time Brooks neared the living area of their room. "…slightly elevated potassium? But not… …it have been linked to a genetic marker? Maybe… …call Dad and get a full-spectrum…"

The ongoing cycle of pacing and half-heard incomprehensible mutterings went on for several hours, long enough that Sam was nearly ready to join Brooks in the nuthouse, but was saved from such drastic action by the ringing of Brooks' new cell phone. Brooks startled comically at the ringer, but halted in mid-step to remove it from his pocket.

"Brooks here," he said, no indication of his ongoing mystification regarding the surviving rat (which had only survived a further week before Vanderhaven euthanized it for further testing and analysis) apparent in his tone of voice. "Oh, hey, Dad. No, still no idea why just the one survived. Anything on those tissue samples I sent you?" Brooks was silent for a moment before exiting the lab, "Yeah, I'm pulling it up now." He took a seat at his desk and pulled something up on his computer. "Yeah, I got the same results. The only abnormality – if it can even be called that – were elevated potassium levels, but they were still well within normal range." Brooks leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling while listening to his father for a few minutes. "Hmm… Maybe. I'll get right on that. I'll check dietary supplementation against direct injection, see if maybe we can recreate it. Yeah, Dad, I did run secondary and even tertiary mirrors of the first run on that strain – I _do_ know what I'm doing. None of them survived." Brooks chuckled at something his dad said, "Speaking of, what's the status of that Class Two in Lisbon?"

While watching Brooks out of the corner of his eyes, Sam had seen his roommate cycle through several emotions during the course of the conversation, but while Brooks listened to his dad answer his question, all the previous animation drained from his expression. He choked out a 'thanks' and made his goodbye. After disconnecting the call, he sat and stared at the phone. He didn't move or blink until Sam prompted him with, "And…?"

Brooks shook his head, barely moving it a total of two inches in either direction. "The outbreak in Portugal has been upgraded to a Class Three, they're _still_ refusing access to Dad's team, and there are rumors of Class Ones and Twos cropping up in half a dozen cities along the coasts of Europe." Brooks took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "If Dad's team can gain access to these areas, they can be dealt with quickly. If not… Well, the environmentalists will finally be happy – humanity won't be fucking over the planet any more."

"Aren't there other teams that deal with this?" Sam asked. "I mean, if this thing's been around so long…"

Brooks shrugged, "There are, but Dad's is the best. We're not going along with millennia-old superstitions here. We do what we have to to contain the situation before it gets out of hand. Unfortunately, in dealing with these superstitious peasants, we've gotten a rather shady reputation. They just don't seem to understand that the only _absolutely certain_ way to make sure the reanimates no longer infect others is to first destroy their brain and then burn the corpse."

At that moment, Sam was pretty sure that both Dean and their dad would like Brooks.

* * *

About the same time that Sam was waking up and deciding to take out some of his accumulated frustrations on the zombie mass penning him in the dorm, Al was shooting down Dean's idea on burning the undead out of their way. "That won't work," Al leaned on the rail overlooking the garage area of the station house. "I tried that a couple of days ago; two of the damn things had me cornered a few blocks west of here. Managed to douse 'em both with some Bicardi 151 and light 'em up, but the fire didn't slow them down _at all_. I managed to get away from them – still don't know how I managed _that_ – but they got into the liquor store. Place burned to the ground in nothin' _flat_. The only upside was that those two that'd had me cornered couldn't have… I s'pose 'survived' is the only word that works, even if it's not exactly accurate."

Dean sighed, ran a hand through his hair and joined Al in leaning on the rail. The fire engines below gleamed dully in the dusty light filtering through the windows set high in the garage-style doors. There was a ladder truck, an EMT wagon, and a couple of generic hose-trucks. The last truck was obviously older than the rest and looked different than most fire trucks. "Hey, Al?"

"Yeah?"

"What's that truck used for?" Dean nodded in the direction of the vintage engine on the furthest side of the garage floor.

"Which… Oh, you mean Trudy? She's a water-cannon. They were used in the sixties for riot-control. Nowadays, Trudy's the truck we use in parades and for the Fourth of July block party," Al explained. "Why?"

Dean looked back at the truck, his eyes lighting up. "The cannon still work?"

Al shrugged, "Yeah. We tune down the pressure for the block party – the kids use her like a giant sprinkler – but she's been kept in pristine condition."

"Riot control, huh?" Dean said, turning a smirk in Al's direction.

Almost as though someone had flipped a switch, Al caught Dean's meaning. He laughed loud and long. "You bet your ass."

The pair used the remaining daylight to double-check that the engine was in running order and to fill the water tank. "How long can a full-pressure stream be kept on before the tank runs dry?" Dean asked as they waited for the reservoir to fill.

"Twenty minutes, tops. That's at full power. We might be able to get away with dialing it down to three-quarters – that'll give us another ten minutes – but much less than that and we won't have enough PSI to knock those things out of the way."

"Head out first thing in the morning?"

Al nodded, "Don't see why not."

"Wish Sammy'd been able to find a CB; it'd be nice to let him know we're comin'."

"Hmm…" It was Al's turn to be the owner of the 'Christmas-lights' eyes as he recalled what he had been planning to do after his shift before shit had hit the fan. "Think we can make it to my car and back?"

"Depends on where you're parked," Dean replied. "Why? Whacha thinkin'?"

"Half a block that way," Al pointed. "There might be another way to get the message to your brother and the others."

* * *

**A/N2:** Yes, the story that Joe tells Miguel on the roof about Sam coming to the defense of the pretty blonde girl took place on Dean's birthday. As most of you know, Dean and Jessica shared a birthday; and the fact that Jess was buried in Palo Alto strongly suggests that she was local to the area (not to mention the fact that the dates on her headstone indicate she was a year younger than Sam). So my note about this story being AU before Sam met Jess wasn't _precisely_ accurate, but though they had _met_, no names were exchanged and Sam didn't start dating her. In my head, had this story not gone AU what with the whole apocalypse-by-zombie-thing, Sam and Jess would have met again sometime during his sophomore year and they likely would have started dating late that year or early in Sam's junior year (according to Show canon, Sam mentions having 'lied to Jess' for a year, and in the real world, most law-school interviews take place during the fall of your senior year).

I have to add a quick THANKS to my nephew, Tigger, for his help on figuring out how Dean was going to get to his brother and a further DANKE to my mom for making me add in another character (Al). Without either of these two people helping me out when I needed it, this chapter would still be sitting at the 1.5K word mark.

Review and lemme know if I need to fix anything and whether or not y'all like where this is going!


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer:** This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by Max Brooks; various publishers including, but not limited to, Three Rivers Press, Crown Publishing Group, and Random House, Inc. This story is also based on characters and situations created and owned by the writers, producers, et al of the television show 'Supernatural', including, but not limited to, the CW network and Eric Kripke. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, internet persona, or other being, living or dead, is completely coincidental and unintentional unless otherwise noted.

**A/N:** This particular chapter would have been out months ago were it not for the fact that I forgot in just which box I had packed my Max Brooks books. I didn't manage to find them until just a couple of days ago (and then I had to spend time rereading my favorite bits, of course). Anyway, sorry for the delay. I hope you enjoy the update!

Just a reminder: This tale is completely AU. It takes place while Sam's at Stanford, before he met Jessica.

This story is rated M for language, gore, and violence. Happy reading!

* * *

**Redefining Perceptions of Insanity**

**Chapter Three**

The first real indication that Sam had that things were rapidly spinning out of control was a tiny, almost unnoticeable news blurb on the MSN website: _Rioting Claims 300 in London, Experts at a Loss to Explain Rash of Violence Sweeping Europe_. He had known, of course, about the issues with the virus Brooks and his father worked with, but that news article was the first confirmation Sam had seen that his roommate's fears weren't unfounded. It was one thing to hear about this virus from Brooks – it was quite another to see news of it in mainstream media. The article didn't mention zombies, walking dead, or anything even remotely similar, but Sam had grown up with reading between the lines and seeing what _wasn't_ said; at times he felt he was better at seeing that than what _was_ said.

The gooseflesh that ran down his back and up his arms was in direct opposition to the warm, humid breeze which ghosted through the open window at sporadic intervals, carrying the scent of the earliest orange blossoms, along with azaleas and poppies and a host of other brightly-colored things that sported petals and pollen and brought to mind long, lazy days of sun-warmed beaches or of picnics in grassy parks where Frisbees were the main distraction. Sam knew, just _knew_, those days wouldn't come this year – even if he hadn't really experienced much in the way of Frisbee-picnics himself; his summers had been spent going from a black car with no A/C to various motels where the general rule was that if the air conditioner worked at all, it was only to serve as a noisy distraction from the inevitable heat and oppressive humidity of whatever craphole, long-forgotten, two-horse town John had dragged him and Dean to in his obsessive hunt for the thing which had killed Mary.

Ignoring the fact that he'd originally intended just to check his email before getting down to some serious study-time, Sam started poking around, looking for more news on what was going on in Europe. Eventually, he stumbled on a blog. Normally, he wouldn't have bothered with such an unreliable source, but he'd not really found much else to go on, which was an oddity all of its own. It was almost as though there was a media blackout in effect regarding the 'riots'. Working his way through the fact that English was quite obviously _not_ the author's native tongue, he soon had a story of a sixteen year-old girl in Rhodes, Greece which was far more gruesome than anything Hollywood could have come up with. There were even videos.

So engrossed in the multimedia account was he that he failed to hear his roommate arrive from his evening class. "I hate it when I'm right about shit like this," Brooks' voice was quiet, but it still managed to startle Sam.

Sam spun around in his chair to see his roommate standing just behind him, staring at the computer screen. There was something… _off_ in Brooks' expression; something that hinted at being a million miles away.

Brooks stopped going to his classes the next day.

By that Friday, which fell on March 14, the first box of canned goods was squirreled away under Brooks' bed, soon joined by a case of bottled water.

Sam continued going to classes and work, and tried to ignore the sense of impending doom looming on the horizon.

* * *

"You got anythin' like a weapon here?" Dean asked, taking the time to unload all the pockets of his jacket and assess what he had with him. He spotted half a package of Twix he'd forgotten about and snagged the candy bar.

Al shrugged and switched on the battery-powered lantern that sat in the middle of the table. Though it wasn't entirely dark yet, the lingering remains of daylight weren't going to last much longer. "Just the axes. Maybe a crowbar in the toolbox. My wife," here his breath caught a little, but he pressed onwards, "my wife, she keeps a handgun under the seat in the car, but I've never used it. Her dad was a cop, ya know? But me? I never really liked guns." All of this was said with Al's gaze locked firmly on Dean's shiny pistol.

"Know what kind it is?" Dean asked, sorting out the garbage – mostly old receipts – from the rest of his pocket-clutter and munching the last of his candy bar. "If it's loaded or not?"

Al shook his head, "The kind that goes _boom_ when you pull the trigger?" He had a half-smile on his face, the kind that indicated he wasn't above making fun of himself. "And yeah, she keeps it loaded. Used to think it was a damn fool move on her part, but I guess she was right, just like always."

Dean deposited the garbage into the plastic bag tied to the cupboard door, "Is it a revolver? Or a semi-auto?"

Al wrenched his gaze from Dean's gun and shrugged again, "No clue. Like I said, I've never used it before."

Dean mentally noted that it was just his luck to get paired with a guy who probably couldn't have identified a S&W if it curled up on his lap and started purring. "In that case, you'll wanna take one of those axes with you. The crowbar, too, if you can find it."

If the gun under the seat in Al's car was even remotely usable, Dean would keep it for Sam. If it was just one of those junky pieces of crap most housewives kept on hand to ward off burglar-nightmares – or phantom carjackers, in this case – Dean wouldn't bother with it. Sam was good with a blade and had a long reach. Dean's main concern at this moment was whether or not the last twenty months or so had been long enough to make Sam rusty. "Just keep in mind that if any of those fuckers show up, you gotta hit 'em hard enough in the head to down 'em permanently. I'll try not ta let any of 'em get that close, but…" he didn't bother finishing the sentence.

"Yeah," Al replied, knowing exactly what Dean had meant. "Um… Just out of curiosity, can I ask…"

When it became apparent Al didn't intend to finish his question, Dean looked up from sorting out the junk he carried around with him. "Spit it out, man."

"Well, I was wondering just what you did for a living?" Al nodded towards the assortment of junk on the table top.

Dean looked at the pile, trying to see it from an outsider's perspective.

There was his cell phone, a middle-of-the-road brand that had a couple of scuff marks on its black plastic from where it had been dropped a couple of times; a dark blue leather-bound journal, slightly larger than an average paperback, with a plain black ink pen clipped to the tie that held it closed; two silver Zippo-style lighters and six books of matches, each matchbook from a different motel or bar covering five separate states; a half-empty pack of Fruit Stripe gum; a plain chapstick; the small pleather case which held his lock picks; the pocket CB scanner, currently turned off; his homemade EMF reader, likewise turned off; the keys to the Impala; an unopened roll of peppermint Lifesavers; two more ink pens, one of which said _The Green Roof Inn, New Haven, VT_; the folded-up computer printout map of the area with the location of his car marked in ball-point; a tattered little green memo book with most of the pages gone; his penlight, still bearing the legend _Property of St. Luke's Hospital, Cedar Rapids, IA_; his mini-Maglight; a six-pack of AA batteries with one missing from the package; a battered deck of Bicycle playing cards; and, last but not least, his pretty, pretty pistol and the seven spare clips of ammunition.

_I probably shoulda cleaned out the jacket before puttin' it on_, he thought. The jacket in question wasn't his leather one, but the blue one with the overabundance of pockets he'd owned since eleventh grade – the leather one, though Dean's favorite, would have been far too warm for late April in California. Ignoring the mental aside, he could see why his new companion would be a trifle confused. Dean let out a short bark of laughter, "What do you _think_ I do?"

Al couldn't help but notice that Dean didn't automatically put his occupation into the past-tense. "Honestly? I have no idea." He nodded to the matchbooks, "Other than the fact you seem to have traveled a lot, I wouldn't know where to even _begin_."

'_Traveled a lot'? Understatement of the fuckin' year._ Dean let his internal amusement surface into a knowing smirk. "Let's just say that I know a bit about shit like what's goin' down out there," he jerked his chin in the direction of the window, "and leave it at that. After we get my brother outta that damn dorm, if you're still curious, I'll tell ya more." He quickly replaced the majority of his things back in their appropriate pockets.

"Fair enough," Al replied.

Dean turned his attention to his pistol and broke it down in near-record time, making sure that it didn't yet need cleaning. The action served a secondary purpose of giving Dean a chance to focus on the task at hand, helping to strip the worry and assorted other emotions from his mind and calming him. Al couldn't look away. Dean paused before sliding the mag back in the handle and quirked an eyebrow at the fireman. "Al?"

"Yeah?"

"The axe?"

Al shook himself, "Yeah. Sorry."

"Focus, dude. I don't know 'bout you, but I wanna make it back in one piece," Dean tapped the clip on the handle of the gun and slid it home.

Al let out an amused huff of air that wasn't quite a laugh. "I hear ya," he said, turning around and heading for the pole to the main floor of the station.

Dean chambered a round and followed him. While Al was retrieving an axe, Dean went to the nearest one of the garage-style doors. He cleaned some of the dust off of a corner of one of the windows and peered outside. "Which car's yours?"

"The new Ford Focus," Al replied before dropping something that clanged against the concrete floor.

Dean could see the back half of the car in question from his position at the window. There weren't any undead shambling between the fire station and the parking place, but just because he couldn't see them, Dean knew that it didn't necessarily mean they weren't there. The young hunter felt Al more than saw him as the fireman arrived at his side, a hefty metal-handled axe in hand. "You got your keys handy?" Dean asked, quickly coming up with a plan to get the both of them to the car and back to the station in as short a time as possible.

"In my pocket."

"Get 'em in your hand. Run the ring over a finger if you're worried you'll drop 'em. You head straight for the car, get what we're after, then come back here quick as you can. I'll cover you." From what little Dean had observed about the… _creatures_, he knew the rapidly-approaching dark would hinder him and Al far more than help them.

Al nodded, "Got it." It was clear from his somewhat transparent expression that he seriously doubted that they'd have any trouble; from what he could see, the way was clear.

Working together, the two of them pushed a heavy toolbox away from where it had been barricading the normal door to the station. It screeched loudly as the red metal scraped over the cement. Dean took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment. _Hang in there, Sammy. I'm on my way._ On opening his eyes, he nodded once at Al, then opened the door.

Dean had never been particularly fond of twilight; the way there was light, but of a sort which washed all colors out to some shade of grey, and how transient shadows seemed to slink through the corners of his vision, making the hairs on the back of his neck stand up like some horror-movie cliché. No, none of that was anything Dean particularly enjoyed. He much preferred bright sunlight, or even a dully rainy day. If a lack of light was necessary, which in his line of work occurred more often than not, he would rather have it be during true night, after the shadows had time to solidify, so to speak. Give the real horrors of the night time to come out and play; Dean knew them and could fight on their terms. It was those imagined threats, half-seen during that black-and-white transition to night that Dean didn't understand and usually refused to deal with.

'Usually' being the operative word.

Sammy was in trouble, and with the cellular service no longer working, Dean needed to send word to his brother. Al had the means in his car, and so Dean was dealing with twilight.

It didn't mean he had to like it.

After opening the door of the firehouse, Dean brought his shiny Colt up into a firing position and scanned the immediate vicinity. He jerked his head and Al hurried around him, heading straight for the new Focus of indeterminate color parked across the street and just down the block. Al first unlocked the car and opened the driver's door. He retrieved a small, soft-sided gun case from under the seat.

On high-alert, Dean never stopped scanning the area while Al proceeded to hurry to the trunk of the car. While the older man retrieved a large plastic case, Dean finally spotted what he was looking for. Forcing himself to _not_ identify the threat as anything other than a target, he fired.

Al jumped at the sudden noise, but quickly recovered.

The zombie dropped in its tracks halfway across the front plaza of the local branch library, a deceptively small hole slightly off-center and over its eyes. Had either Dean or Al gone over to look more closely, they would have seen that more than half of the corpse's skull had been removed by the bullet.

"You got everything?" Dean asked, still scanning their surroundings.

"Yeah."

"Good," he replied just as that _fucking_ moan sounded, "'cause it's time to run."

A mid-sized group of living dead, attracted to the general area by the noises they'd made within the fire station zeroed in on their precise location, by either the sound of their footsteps or by the gunshot, Dean didn't know, nor did he particularly care. The shambling cluster advanced on their position from an alleyway between them and the firehouse door.

Dean fired again. A woman in half a sweater and jeans dropped.

They were now only twenty feet or so from the entrance.

Another bang, and an elderly man was no longer a threat.

Another pull on the gun and one more target dropped.

A quick succession of three easy squeezes of the trigger finished clearing the way back to the relative safety of the station. After replacing the heavy tool chest back in front of the door, Al took the time to regain his breath and give his pulse time to slow back to a healthy level.

Dean wasn't even breathing hard. There was something inherently unfair in that, to Al's way of thinking, though he wasn't sure what it might possibly be. "Where'd you learn to shoot like that?" he asked, still waiting to come down from the adrenaline rush.

"Cub scouts," Dean stated, a cocky grin firmly in place on his face.

"Bull."

Dean shrugged a little, "My dad taught me."

Though Al could see how a father would teach his son how to use a gun, it still didn't explain how his new companion could make a running head-shot with a pistol; something Kent Matthesin, Al's longtime buddy on the police force, maintained was nearly impossible. "I think I'm gonna hold you to that whole explain-later thing, you know."

Dean figured he could live with that – after all, what possible use was his dad's number-one rule in the current circumstances? Sure, back before the world went nuts, it made sense that the Winchesters did what they did and shut up about it. Now, however, the last thing Dean needed – especially once they'd gotten Sammy and those others from the dorm – was some idiot who'd watched one too many Romero flicks questioning Dean's orders. _Sam's too, for that matter_.

Pulling himself from his thoughts, Dean removed the now-empty clip from his gun and replaced it with a full one before moving to help Al transport the things they needed up to the second floor of the station. From there, it was a simple matter to take a staircase to the flat roof.

* * *

"Come on, Dean. Where the hell are you?" Sam whispered, his eyes scanning the mostly-dark skyline. With the power out, the remaining lights were roughly an even split between solar-powered yard lights and fires that had no one to put them out. The few remaining lights might be more survivors, but they may as well have been on the moon for all the help Sam could give them.

If he could ignore the incessant moaning from below and shove his ever-growing worry for his brother out of his mind, Sam could almost convince himself it was a nice night. It was warm and, after living with the stench of rotting corpses that didn't have the sense to remain wholly dead, Sam no longer noticed their foul odor. Instead, he could smell the salty air coming in off the Pacific and the odd whiff of smoke, but the smoke was diluted enough that it added, rather than detracted, from the almost peaceful nature of the evening.

Mark and Heidi had disappeared again, Martha was sleeping, Miguel and Joe were playing – of all things – Crazy Eights down on the fifth-floor landing, keeping an ear on their barricades while they did so. Brooks was still working. Sam was pretty sure that if Brooks accidentally became infected with solanum, the man wouldn't even notice, but continue looking for a way to fight it.

Unsure of how long he'd been standing on the rooftop, staring out across the city and lost in thought, Sam startled when Mark joined him. "You're worried, ain't ya?"

Sam nodded, "Yeah, but there's not much I can do about it."

"Look," Mark kept his eyes over by the door to the stairs, not looking at Sam. "What we gonna do if your family don't show? We can't stay here forever."

Sam tore his gaze from the skyline and glared at Mark. "Dean'll come."

"You ain't heard from him in how long?" Mark pressed the issue. "How d'ya know he's even still… Shit happens, you know? He coulda –"

Sam whirled and grabbed Mark's t-shirt, "Don't you _dare_ finish that sentence. Dean's _fine_. He said he'd come for us, and he _will_."

"Sam?" Heidi's voice sounded from the shadows near the stairwell door.

Sam let out a breath and forced himself to let go of Mark's shirt. "Sorry," he said, straightening the creases his fist had left in the cotton. "You don't know my brother – he said he'd come, and he keeps his word. One way or another, he'll get us out of here."

"Do you hear that?" Heidi asked, coming a little closer now that Sam appeared to have calmed down somewhat.

"Hear what?" Mark asked.

Sam cocked his head at an angle and turned slightly. He could hear… _something_. It sounded almost like an electric fan. "What _is_ that?"

They didn't have to wait long for an answer. Within minutes, the noise grew slightly louder and Sam spotted a couple of small lights hovering a hundred yards away. The lights grew steadily closer.

It was a radio-controlled helicopter and dangling from it was a CB radio. The three of them cleared out of the way of the model aircraft and it landed neatly on the roof. Slowly, its rotors came to a halt. This particular RC model definitely wasn't a toy – it was custom-rigged with an elaborate camera setup and Sam figured it probably cost several thousand dollars at the minimum. Once the rotors halted their motion, Sam seized the small radio and turned it on. Before he could say anything, his brother's voice came through the speaker. "Pack your shit, Sammy – the cavalry's comin' to haul your gigantor ass outta this freakin' graveyard."

Sam's smile was nearly bright enough to illuminate the rooftop. He ignored Mark and Heidi and hit the talk button, "Damn, Dean, it's good to hear your voice."

"I know, I know – shoulda been a DJ," the radio quality was far clearer than Sam's prior experience with CBs and walkie-talkies had led him to believe, but the younger Winchester chalked that up to the fact that there probably weren't _any_ other radio signals within a three-mile radius.

"How're you going to get through?" Sam asked.

"Ran into a guy from the fire department," Dean's voice explained through the black plastic. "Gonna use the water-cannon to blast those fuckers outta the way."

Sam chuckled and shook his head at the CB. _Only Dean…_ Out loud, he said, "What time?"

"Oh, I'm free between six and seven – how's that figure on your schedule, Sammy?"

"I'll pencil you in, jerk."

"See you tomorrow, bitch."

Holding the CB tightly in hand as he headed for the door to the stairs, Sam valiantly refrained from sending an 'I told you so' at Mark.

* * *

While Dean was inspecting and cleaning the handgun retrieved from his car, Al bade a sad farewell to his helicopter control console. Like he'd told Dean, he and Miranda had never had kids, and so he had to use his hazard-pay for something, may as well be a combination of his two main hobbies – model aircraft and photography. In the current clime, however, Al knew he'd need to look into finding other hobbies. At least until the world got back on its feet. He had no doubt whatsoever that the current craziness would eventually die down, one way or another, and let the survivors get on with their lives. He wasn't sure if it was denial or what his wife called his most irritating trait – compulsive optimism – talking, but he didn't care.

Ignoring Dean's mutterings about the gun – something along the lines of 'surprised it wasn't a freakin' bb gun' and 'has this thing _ever _been cleaned' – Al stretched out on the sofa and tried to get some sleep.

For his part, Dean wasn't at all tired. He really wanted to go get his brother _now_, but knew he would just be handicapping the effort by attempting it in the middle of the night. And so he busied himself with stripping down Al's wife's .22 caliber pistol. It was almost an insult to weaponry – the damn thing was metallic _pink_! But it did have a good thirty rounds of ammo in its little carrying case. Dean was torn on whether or not to have Sam use it when they rescued him – on one hand, Dean was a better shot, and with such a small caliber to work with, every round counted and eye-shots would be the best option; on the other hand, it was freakin' _pink_.

He supposed he could make the choice when they actually had Sam within their grasp.

* * *

"Are you fucking _insane_? No, I'm not going to leave! I'm getting closer to some actual _answers_ here!" Brooks' yelling wasn't wholly unexpected, at least for Sam.

Joe and Miguel both bristled a little at Brooks' tone, but Sam simply straightened up and remained inordinately calm. "Look, I get that, Vanderhaven, but we," he gestured to the others who were scattered haphazardly around the boys' dorm room, "are getting out of here tomorrow morning."

"And where do you plan on going, Winchester? The moon? Because that's about the only place left where those fucking zombies won't show!"

Sam let a small grin surface on his face; Joshua's 'house' was remote and a fourteen year-old Sam had once claimed that visiting there was like visiting the moon. "No, not the moon. Somewhere equally safe, though. And not just from them." That last sentence was almost whispered and the only one who heard it, aside from Brooks, was Heidi.

Brooks scoffed, though he'd heard Sam's last comment, it hadn't really registered. "_No_ place is _that _safe! Don't you get that?"

Sam shrugged, the flickering light of the candles somehow magnifying the gesture. "Maybe, maybe not. But it's a helluva lot safer than _here_. Ignoring the fact that we're all but out of food and the water's not going to be running for too much longer, there's still the fact that we're right in the middle of one of the biggest cities in the US, and that solanum shit isn't the only germ threat out there – not all the dead are up and walking, you know. Besides, I don't know about the others here, but I know _I_ won't be too worried with closing and locking the doors behind me come morning."

"Amen to that," Martha supplied her two cents.

Brooks deflated. Sam's points were accurate – they _were_ practically out of food; with no electricity, the pumps that supplied the water lines wouldn't be doing their jobs; and the probability of some nasty bug arising in the wake of innumerable corpses was more than just likely, it was inevitable.

Joe, all but invisible in the low light of the room, sighed and said, "Vanderhaven, if this place is all Sam claims, surely you can get back to whatever the fuck you've been doing when we get there."

Sam quickly thought over the area surrounding Joshua's and slowly nodded, "Might be able to… Yeah, if it's not too overrun, we could probably get the equipment you'd need. But we have to get there first."

"Just how far is it, Sam?" Martha, ever-practical, asked.

"Yeah, you ain't said _where_ we're goin', just that it's 'somewhere safe'," Mark pointed out.

"Central Oregon," Sam replied. "Not too far from Bend."

"Why _there_?" Joe asked.

"Because that's where Joshua lives," Sam explained. "He's… A family friend." Sam sighed. "Look, it's kinda hard to explain, but you'll understand once we get there."

After some more conversation, during which Sam remained more than just a little elusive regarding just _why_ he was so convinced that this Joshua's place was so safe, the group split up to gather what supplies they needed to take with them.

No one slept all that well that night, not with their rescue looming on the horizon. Sam, though, didn't sleep at all. He knew they'd need a diversion. Even with the water cannon and the fact that Dean rarely missed his shots.

* * *

When the earliest reports started coming in regarding cannibalistic corpses shuffling around in Brunswick, Georgia, the national media reported it as a hoax. The assumption was understandable as it had been April first, but Sam knew better. It was roughly twelve hours later that videos started popping up from cities and towns up and down the Atlantic seaboard. Within seventy-two hours of the 'hoax', half the population of New York City was chowing down on the other half.

Rumors started flying even as the information network started breaking down; rumors ranging from the absurd to the frightening. Some claimed that the President had ordered a series of tactical nuclear strikes in hopes of containing the outbreak. Others claimed that it was the Wrath of God and that no one could stop it. Some said it was caused by radiation from space, others by the Chernobyl incident, and still others were calling it 'African rabies'. Tied in with the 'rabies' claims, an enterprising pseudo-pharmacological company was marketing a 'vaccine', though there wasn't any proof at all it would work against what was going on. Sam knew for a fact the 'vaccine' was fraudulent; if one already existed, why would his roommate be so focused on creating one?

The first zombies showed up in the bay area on Thursday, April third. By noon, most of the student population of Stanford had panicked and departed, most hoping to get home. Sam knew he likely wouldn't ever see any of them again. Standing on the rooftop of his dorm, after having barricaded the doors on the first floor and finding out who else was still in the building, he could hear the sounds of chaos rising up from the city below. There were fifteen people sharing the dorm with him and his roommate. Sighing, Sam wondered just what it was about the perceived end of the world that brought the nuts out in force – Y2K had been just as crazily bizarre, even with the lack of shambling corpses intent on eating their living counterparts. As faint screams mingled with sirens and the first undead moans, punctuated by sporadic gunfire, he wondered just why a worldwide scenario like the one currently playing out hadn't happened earlier.

On Friday, Brooks received what would turn out to be the last phone call he ever received from his father. Sam hadn't been in the room to hear it – he'd gone up to the roof for some air – but he did see the effect it had on his roommate.

Brooks was paler than normal and sitting on his bed, staring at the wall. It was the stillest Sam had ever seen him. "What's wrong?"

The question seemed to snap Brooks out of his state and he let out a nervous laugh, "Wrong question, Winchester. Would have been easier to ask 'what's right?' The answer'd be shorter."

"Fair enough. How about what's got you zoning out?"

"My dad called. They're implementing the Redeker Plan."

"The what?" In all Sam had read that day he'd hacked into Vanderhaven's files, he didn't recall anything of that name.

"Back in '84, a guy named Paul Redeker was working for the government in South Africa. Came up with a doomsday plan for the Afrikaner minority back when the country was just about to tear itself apart." Sam nodded to show he was familiar with the political history of that part of the world. "After things calmed somewhat, his plan was declassified and eventually a copy of it made its way into my dad's files. One of the liaisons that shuttled intel between my dad's group and our own government ended up reading it and warping it to deal with the possibility of a Class Four solanum outbreak in the US. It wasn't received very well, and Dad thought it had been tabled; we had other plans on hand should things get this bad. Unfortunately, some jacked-up excuse for a desk jockey found the damn thing and presented it to the Joint Chiefs."

"What's so bad about it? I mean, I assume there were reasons why your dad's group tried to bury it."

Brooks shook his head, "That's not it. It really is a cunningly devised plan. Takes less time and manpower to implement than any of the others we've been able to come up with. Step one: Pull the military back to an easily-defensible position. Step two: Evacuate select individuals from the political and business arenas to this same position. Step three: Evacuate a number of civilians to the same position. Step four: Set up groups of other civilians as decoys in positions which help strengthen the defensibility of the main compound. Step five: Working outwards from the main compound, systematically cleanse the threat from all surrounding areas, reintroducing any surviving members of the decoy groups into the main group as the areas are cleared while resupplying remaining decoy groups as needed."

The ramifications of what Brooks said didn't take long to dawn on Sam. "_What_? You're saying that they're not even going to _try_… That they're leaving people as _bait_?"

Vanderhaven nodded. "And that right there is why Dad hoped this plan wouldn't ever see the light of day."

It wasn't until two weeks later that the survivors of Packard Dormitory saw the arrival of armored transport trucks whose sole purpose was to try and relocate as many uninfected people as possible. By then, there weren't many people left to save. When the military passed through the campus, most of the other students who had started out sharing the building chose to leave with them. Only Sam, Brooks, Martha, Joe, Mark, Heidi, and Miguel remained. Sam didn't know why they stayed with him and Brooks, they didn't say. Brooks stayed because of his work. Sam stayed because he knew that, even if their dad didn't approve, Dean wouldn't leave him alone, not with everything that was going on.

* * *

As the sun rose over the bay area, Dean was about ready to crawl out of his skin. He managed to wait until the whole of the sun was above the horizon before shaking Al awake, and considered it something of a miracle that he'd been able to wait even _that _long. Fortunately for Dean, Al was the kind of person who woke fully alert; it probably had something to do with being on-call 24/7 for the fire station.

After spending what seemed to be an inordinately long time running over the controls for the water cannon, Al finally slid behind the wheel of Trudy while Dean climbed onto the little platform where the cannon resided. "You ready for this?" Al called out from within the cab.

"You kiddin'? I was _born_ ready," Dean replied, pounding once on the roof of the truck.

Al started the engine and sent a mental apology to the taxpayers of Palo Alto for what he was about to do. With no power, the electric opener for the garage doors wouldn't work. Combine that with the fact that the moaning undead outside hadn't gone away after he and Dean had returned to the station the evening before made the act unavoidable. He shifted into first and let the clutch out. "Hang on!" he shouted.

Dean was a half-step ahead of him and had ducked below the level of the water cannon, holding the rails of the platform with a white-knuckle grip.

The antique fire engine rolled forward, quickly gaining momentum under Al's expert guidance. As the front end collided with the garage door, there was an echoing explosion of wood and steel and glass as the windows shattered, followed by some thudding noises Dean didn't want to think too hard on. Once the engine was clear of the door, Dean stood and pulled his Colt. Several zombies had managed to grab hold of various parts of the truck. While Al forced the truck up through second and third gears, gaining speed all the while, Dean made short work of clearing those undead motherfuckers. When the last of them fell from the sides of Trudy, Dean dug in his pocket for the CB.

"Sammy, you there?"

"Sure thing. And the name's _Sam_, you know."

"Whatever, Sammy. You ready to blow that popsicle stand?"

"More than."

Knowing that Al would be listening in on the CB inside the cab, Dean asked, "What door should we aim for?"

"There aren't a whole lot of cars left in the parking lot, so if you come in from that side, it'd be best. Besides, it's paved, so there won't be a chance of getting stuck."

"Good plan. See ya soon, Sammy."

It didn't take long for the aging fire truck to worm her way through the side streets between the fire station and the Stanford campus. When a car blocked her way, Al merely gunned the gas and plowed the obstruction right out of the way.

* * *

The group of survivors were standing around the doors to the parking lot – the same set of metal double-doors Sam had noticed back when he and Martha were searching the basement for flammable liquids. Each one of them had a backpack; Brooks' held nothing more than his laptop computer and burned CDs of all the information housed on his desktop. The others' were somewhat more practical, containing things like the last of their food and candles and matches. Heidi was the only one not carrying a weapon. Joe carried the 'in case of emergency, break glass' axe from the landing between the third and fourth floors; Miguel had his trusty 'lucky' baseball bat; Mark had located a crowbar somewhere and had it with him. Martha carried a long, wooden mop handle, on the end of which she'd affixed the chef's knife from the dorm's kitchen. Brooks' weapon appeared to be an odd cross between brass knuckles and a stiletto; Sam vaguely recalled seeing something similar in a documentary on WWI back in high school. Sam, who had ignored the pointed questions regarding his having them to begin with, had his 'graduation' present from his brother – a pair of silver, wickedly curved sickle-like blades – secured within their holsters and strapped to his thighs.

The CB flared to life, startling both Joe and Martha. "Sammy, we're about five minutes out. You ready to shag ass outta there?"

Sam pulled the radio out of his pocket, "As we'll ever be. See ya soon." After replacing it in the right chest pocket of his jacket, he turned to Brooks. "You get them to that truck. Can you do that?"

Brooks' gaze narrowed sharply. "What are you going to do?"

The corners of Sam's mouth pulled back a little, "Make sure you get there."

"What?" Heidi asked. "What do you mean, Sam?"

"No time to explain. Just do what I say. Joe? You and Mark follow me. The rest of you get ready to go." Sam turned and strode back towards the stairwell, snagging a coil of nylon climber's rope he'd located the night before in the students' storage area.

"What the _fuck_, Winchester?" Joe didn't much care for confusion.

When they rounded a corner, Sam paused at the door to the stairwell. "You two need to secure this door. Either ram a mop through the handles or shove something against it. Tell the others not to run until the truck honks. I'll make sure Dean knows what's going on."

"That doesn't help _us_ much," Mark grumbled.

"Look, you'll need a distraction. There's too many of them out there for the water cannon on that truck to be able to keep them all out of the way. So, I rigged something that should lure them in."

"What about you?" Joe didn't like where this was heading. Not one bit.

Sam grinned, "Don't worry about me."

With that, Sam disappeared into the stairwell, leaping up the steps five at a time. Sam hoped that Joe and Mark followed instructions. On reaching the first floor, Sam quickly removed the pile of furniture which had been barricading the main doors before turning and sprinting to the second set of doors to do likewise. He heard the glass in the main doors shatter just as he'd cleared the second set. He ducked into the back stairwell and headed up to the roof. He heard the hoard begin their shambling around the first floor. Still running up the stairs, Sam retrieved the CB.

"Dean?"

"Yeah?"

"I set up a diversion – don't come all the way up to the dorm yet. Wait for my signal, then come in as close as you can and have that firefighter honk the horn."

"Whaddaya got up your sleeve, Sammy?"

Sam burst out onto the roof, only slightly out of breath. "Hijacked the battery outta that helicopter and the batteries outta anything else I found – rigged 'em to all the speakers I could find. They're attracted to noise."

"Damn."

"No kidding – took all night." Sam braced the roof door closed with a chair before heading to where he'd set up the battery bank and a CD player. He smiled a little as he hit 'play' and switched the speaker-circuit on. There was a moment of silence from the system as the disk loaded, then the guitar and drums started in. It wasn't overwhelmingly loud – the batteries didn't have quite enough juice to pull of something like that – but it was loud enough.

Sam uncoiled the rope and ran it around a vent-pipe before tying it off and tossing the loose end over the side of the building from which the basement doors exited, then leaned against the railing and watched as the numbers of zombies directly below thinned more quickly than he'd expected. He glanced up and saw the distinctive red of the fire engine approaching slowly. "Dean?" he said into the radio.

"Yeah?"

"You remember all those rope-climbing drills Dad had us do as kids?"

"Yeah."

"I'm kinda glad for them now," Sam said as he stepped into the harness that had come as a gift-with-purchase in the box where he'd found the rope.

"Never thought I'd hear you say that."

"Yeah, well… Never thought we'd see an apocalypse by living dead, either," Sam replied.

"Said that same thing myself. Just outta curiosity, though… Why bring up the ropes?"

"'Cause I'm gonna climb down from the roof."

"How did I know you were gonna say that." It wasn't a question. "You better be careful, Sammy, or I'm _so_ gonna kick your ass."

Sam glanced down and saw that there were only about a hundred undead remaining on his side of the building. "I know, I know. You can probably start comin' in now. Remember to honk when you're as close as you can get to the door. That'll let the others know you're out there."

Sam returned the radio to his pocket one last time and quickly latched the rope to the harness. He took a moment to breathe and center himself; he'd not done this since he was sixteen. Then he grasped the rope and swung himself over the edge and began rappelling down.

Track one of the CD switched over to track two just as the antique fire engine reached the outer edges of the parking area, and Drowning Pool's _Bodies_ began playing. "Now _that's_ fuckin' _awesome_!" Dean's voice yelled through the radio loud enough to make the speaker buzz just before the water cannon on the truck started blasting zombies out of the way. An oddly meek horn sounded several times; barely loud enough to be heard over the music and the moaning of the shambling corpses.

Sam paused somewhere between the fourth and third floors, wishing he'd had the forethought to search out a pair of gloves that fit. He looked down at a blast of gunfire. Dean had aimed the cannon in such a way that it was keeping the vast majority of the zombies from reaching the running figures of Sam's friends while using a pistol to take care of the half-dozen or so which hadn't had the sense to be swept out of the way by the cannon. The truck was roughly a hundred yards from the doors.

By the time Sam reached the ground and detached himself from the rope, both Heidi and Miguel had reached the truck and were climbing into the cab. Joe was only a few feet away and Mark was helping Martha back to her feet at the halfway point. Brooks was barely ten feet from Sam, grappling with a zombie in a gore-crusted suit. Sam unsnapped the holsters to his blades and calmly walked up behind the duo. Crossing his arms, he settled the blades to either side of the zombie's neck, then jerked them at cross-purposes to one another in a scissoring action. The finely-honed silver met little resistance as they cut easily through muscle and sinew. The zombie's head rolled several times before ricocheting off of the side of the dorm.

Brooks met Sam's eyes for a moment, breathing hard. Sam nodded a little, sheathing the blades. "Time to go."

They reached the truck with no more difficulty. Martha had squeezed into the cab with Heidi and Miguel. Joe had climbed up onto the massive water tank and was hanging on to the cannon's platform railing, as was Mark. Brooks followed their example, and Dean gave Sam a hand up to the platform itself. Once Sam was safely on the rather small circular bit of steel, Dean smacked him in the back of the head.

"Ow! What was that for?" Sam asked, rubbing the spot.

"Idiot," Dean said by way of explanation.

And just like that, it was like Sam had never left.

* * *

**A/N2:** The blades Sam's got with him are a two-fer of the one we saw him carrying in the Season One promos (that was shown in Show for all of half a nanosecond). Yeah, I know he supposedly only had the one, but I liked the thought of him having a matched pair.

Remember to review and show your support for ficwriters everywhere!


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer:** This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by Max Brooks; various publishers including, but not limited to, Three Rivers Press, Crown Publishing Group, and Random House, Inc. This story is also based on characters and situations created and owned by the writers, producers, et al of the television show 'Supernatural', including, but not limited to, the CW network and Eric Kripke. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, internet persona, or other being, living or dead, is completely coincidental and unintentional unless otherwise noted.

**A/N:** I've always wondered just what sort of job Sam had while he was in school; mainly because I've never heard of a scholarship full enough to provide things like shoes, clothes, and pencils (though I have heard of ones where books were included). So, in this story, I decided to reveal one possibility of former employment for the youngest Winchester. I hope it makes sense. And yeah, the place's name is a total homage to the _Dawn of the Dead_ remake (which I can get away with referencing here because it wasn't released until the year _after _when I've set this tale).

As you read this installment, you'll notice (I hope) that this is the first uncut chapter thus far in the story – meaning it doesn't contain any flashbacks. This doesn't mean that there won't be any more flashbacks, it simply means that for this chapter, they weren't necessary.

Just a reminder: This tale is completely AU. It takes place while Sam's at Stanford, before he met Jessica.

This story is rated M for language, gore, and violence. Happy reading!

* * *

**Redefining Perceptions of Insanity**

**Chapter Four**

As awesome as movies were, it was a very good thing that they were so very often wrong when it came to their portrayal of the living dead. Had they been fast, like in _Resident Evil_ and _28 Days Later_ – granted, in the case of the second one, they weren't _technically_ zombies, but whatever – Dean was sure they would have all been screwed. As it was, they never went faster than a shambling shuffle. It made the older Winchester wonder if maybe, just _maybe_ Romero had ran into some real-life examples at some point in his life.

In less than two blocks, they managed to leave behind the zombies who'd not yet shambled into the dorm to locate Sam's diversion. Al kept the aging truck running at a steady twenty miles per hour, slowing only when he turned a corner. He had Dean's computer-printout map and strict instructions to head to the 'X' marked in ball-point.

As they passed the edge of the campus, Dean removed a soft-sided pistol case from the inner pocket of his jacket. "Got a present for ya, Sammy."

Sam took the case and opened it while Dean reloaded his gun and watched out of the corner of his eye. "What the _hell_, Dean?" The .22 looked like a squirt gun in Sam's exceedingly large paw. "What am I supposed to do with this? Throw it at 'em?"

Dean squashed down the urge to grin and faced his little brother. "Hey, it was the best I could do." Sam glared lightly at him. Dean's expression cracked and his sunny smile broke free. "What did you expect, Sammy, an AK-47 with laser sights and night-vision scope?"

"It's a freakin' _.22_. And it's _pink_. You're _sure_ this was the best you could do?"

Dean shrugged, "Don't blame me, dude. Al had it in his car, so yeah. It was handy."

Brooks took the pause while Sam searched for an appropriate comeback to comment, "You know, it's not that bad. Working with Dad, I've seen a .22 do more damage than a .38 or even a .45, simply _because_ they aren't as big or powerful – they don't always punch through the back of the skull, so they occasionally end up ricocheting around in the brain case."

"Oh yeah?" Dean bristled a little, but before he could say anything else, Sam placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Don't, Dean. He knows what he's talking about."

Further debate was halted as the water cannon started slowing down. Dean dug the CB out of his pocket, "What's up, Al?"

"Gonna stop just up here. Figured we're gonna need some more vehicles, and the Honda dealer's probably the best bet. They've got their own gas-pump, runs on a solar generator," Al's reply was calm.

"How d'ya know that?"

"My cousin owns – owned – whatever. It was hers."

After pulling to a stop among the sea of new and used vehicles, everyone climbed off and out of the truck. It was totally silent, save for the cooing of some pigeons on the roof of the office. Now that they were relatively safe, a round of introductions was made. Dean asked to see his map of the area and had Al point out where they were. The lot was only a few blocks from where he'd parked the Impala. Dean pulled Sam over to the map, "I'm gonna run over and bring her this way. Keep the civs from being too moronic about what they pick out – we still got a helluva long haul ahead of us, and there ain't no way to know for sure what's out there."

"Want me to come with you?" Sam asked.

Dean shook his head. "Nah, I'm good. If I'm not back in fifteen, come look for me." His eyebrows arched and he pointed at his brother. "I mean it; I ain't back in fifteen minutes, you come find me."

A light smile dimpled the corners of Sam's mouth. "I will. Promise." Dean turned on his heel and was several yards away when Sam called out to him, "Be careful."

Dean's only reply was a cocky smirk as he drew the machete that still hung from his belt; his pistol hadn't left his hand since arriving at the campus. "I always am, Sammy," he said, walking backwards for a few paces.

Sam checked the time on his phone and quickly set the alarm to beep in a quarter of an hour. When he finished, he saw that the others had disappeared, with the exceptions of Al and Joe. Sam quirked an eyebrow. Joe shrugged, "Never learned how to drive, man."

Al echoed the shrug, "I'm not going more than five feet from whoever has a gun."

Sam smiled mostly to himself, wondering just what had happened between Al and his brother to engender that type of reply, when the sound of shattering glass drew his attention to the building. Dodging around a couple of cars, Sam caught sight of the others standing in a huddle around the glass doors that led to the lot's showroom floor. Jogging, he, Joe, and Al caught up quickly. Mark finished brushing the remaining shards of glass out of the steel frame with his crowbar just as they arrived. "Figured there's no sense in hotwiring anything if we can find the keys," he said by way of explanation.

"Whatever you decide on," Sam said as he ducked under the push-bar on the inside of the door, "make sure it's got enough room for all of you. Me and Dean could probably take two – three if you squeezed – in the Impala, but no more than that."

Once everyone was inside the showroom, Al let out a sigh. "I think the lockbox for the keys is in Janet's office. It's back this way," he said, taking a step in that direction.

"Hold up," Sam laid a hand on the older man's shoulder. "Before we hunt out a set of keys, maybe you should figure out what you're taking."

Al shrugged a little, "Don't look at me. I don't care what we take so long as it's got a roof."

The others nodded in agreement, Brooks excluded. Sam's roommate was simply staring at the contents of the showroom, frowning. Sam mentally groaned. _Figures. Dean takes off and I'm left in charge, never mind the fact I could do with a little input, too._ "Okay…Um…Okay." He took a breath and held it for a moment. "Let's get a few ground rules in place now that we're no longer in any immediate danger of becoming lunch: First off, don't wander off alone. Try not to wander off at all, unless me or Dean or Brooks here is with you –"

"Hey," Brooks objected. "I'm not a babysitter!"

Sam's perpetual slouch evaporated and he crossed the distance to where Brooks was standing in one long, smooth stride. "Of course you're not," he said, his voice somewhere between menacing and flat. "No more than Dean or I am. But that doesn't change the fact that the three of us are probably the only ones in this little group of ours that has _any_ idea what we're fucking _doing_. So you're gonna remove that self-righteous stick you've got shoved up your ass and help us out a little."

"Or what?" Brooks glared at Sam.

"Or we'll leave you here. How long do you think you'll last without someone to watch your back, Vanderhaven?" The comment came from Miguel, breaking the growing argument apart as effectively as Mark's crowbar had shattered the glass in the showroom door.

Silence descended, echoing louder than an all-out brawl could have.

Martha managed to drag them back on-topic. "You were saying, Sam, about ground rules?"

"Yeah." Sam scrubbed a hand across his face. "Yeah," he repeated. "Don't go anywhere alone. Don't go anywhere unarmed. If you come across one of those damn _things_, kill it quickly before it can attract any more – and in case you didn't catch the memo," he addressed the addendum to Al and Heidi, "you need to either destroy their brain in some way – shooting, stabbing, or whatever – or decapitate the damn things. If you do that, though, you need to make sure you stay away from the mouth even after the fact; they can still bite until their brain's gone. If you find more than one, don't try to take them on – just run. Try not to panic though. If you panic, you'll be more likely to wind up not paying attention and end up in a worse situation than the one you left." If Brooks could tell that Sam was paraphrasing that pamphlet he'd read after hacking into the former bio-major's computer all those months ago, he didn't let on. "That's about all I can think of right now, but when Dean gets back with the car, he'll probably have more."

"How come your brother went after his car? I mean, we're at a _car dealership_. It's not like he couldn't just pick a new one." Though Heidi had a point, Sam was hard-pressed not to laugh at her. _It's not like she really knows Dean._

Instead of laughing, he simply let a tight smile surface, "He's got some things that will come in handy in the trunk and it makes more sense just to go ahead and retrieve the car than it would to unpack the stuff we'll need. But, speaking of the car, you still need to pick something. We can't all fit in the Impala."

Brooks chose that moment to rejoin the conversation. "Anyone besides me can ride a motorcycle?"

Miguel and Martha both said they could. Brooks simply nodded in the direction of the showroom, where there were roughly a dozen non-car vehicles arranged around a couple of new models of cars. There were about six motorcycles, three four-wheelers, and a couple of scooters. _And isn't that a jet-ski or whatever they're called?_

"The pump's probably in the service bays," Mark mentioned while Miguel, Martha, and Brooks took a closer look at the motorcycles on offer.

"We'll all go that way once the rest of you figure out what you're going to be driving," Sam replied.

"Well, the way I figure it, we only need one more car. Probably'd be best to go with a pickup or something like that. Me an' Heidi can ride in it, and Joe an' Al can ride with you and your brother." Mark scratched the back of his neck while he spoke.

Sam nodded slowly, "Makes sense." He turned to Al, "You know whether or not your…cousin, right?" Al nodded. "Your cousin has anything like a four-wheel drive around here? Maybe with a winch?"

Al smiled brightly, "Ah, hell. I can do you one better than that. Janet's got a tow-truck somewhere around here."

"That'll work," Sam replied, his smile going from forced to genuine as he heard the distinctive sound of the Impala pulling into the lot. Moments later, it pulled to a stop parallel to the wall of windows. Dean grinned at his brother through the glass and cut the engine. The older Winchester made short work of crossing the short distance between the Impala and his brother. "Any problems?" Sam asked.

"Not a one," Dean's grin didn't fade. "So, what did the kids decide to go with?"

"Joe and Al will ride with us, Martha, Miguel, and Brooks are going to abscond with some motorcycles, and Al here says his cousin keeps a tow-truck on the property, which Mark and Heidi'll ride in."

"Not too shabby, Sammy," Dean replied. "Now that the car's here, let's see if we can't get these folks something a little better than sports equipment and kitchen knives."

Dean and Sam herded the group out to the waiting Impala. For her part, the car simply sat as though basking in the springtime California sunshine. Sam hadn't really realized just how homesick he'd been until he saw her. Though he'd never admit as much to his brother, he had – every now and then – poured his heart out to her while growing up. She was the one constant in their lives; the one and only thing that never changed even though the view through her windows was in constant motion. Sam suddenly realized that, for all his running, he was _home_, and _damn _if it didn't feel _good_.

Unaware of Sam's inner train of thought, Heidi took one look at the car and let out a noise similar to the one she'd released a week earlier on finding a half-eaten can of fruit cocktail slowly fermenting on the window ledge of one of the dorm rooms. "You risked your life to bring back _this_? It's, what, like ninety years old? Probably has like a million miles on it, too." Her nose wrinkled at the black steel.

Dean spun around mid-step and glared at the girl. "First of all, she ain't yours, so keep your comments to yourself. Secondly, she's only thirty-six. Thirdly, she's got one million, eight hundred eleven thousand, four hundred twenty-three-point-seven miles on her as of me parking right here. Point out one other car inside a fifty mile radius that has that kind of dependability. You can't." He strode the few short feet to the Impala and caressed the trunk before opening it. "Ignore her, baby. She's just a kid and don't know any better."

While Heidi was trying to figure out just why Dean had such an explosive reaction to her comment on his choice of vehicle, Sam did some quick math. "Almost two hundred thousand miles? Damn. You and Dad must have been busy – I was only here for less than two years."

"Whatever, Sammy. Fuglies don't sleep, so Dad figured we shouldn't either. Subject drop, now." Dean shifted a couple of duffle bags closer up to the back seat and opened the weapons compartment.

"Still got the Taurus?" Sam asked, setting the toylike .22 down among the chaotic confluence of guns, knives, and assorted whatnot that choked the lockbox.

"Yeah, I still have the Taurus. Don't know how much ammo it's got, but it should still be here somewhere." Dean picked up the sawed-off 12-gauge Winchester shotgun and rummaged around until he came up with eight iron-round shells. The salt shells he and his dad had come up with last year weren't going to be of much use against a soulless shambling mound of ex-human. While Dean loaded the shells in the pump-action, Sam spotted the distinctive nickel plating of the Taurus hiding under the hilt of the plastic-handled machete Dean disdained in favor of the wood-handled one. Another moment of searching scoured up two clips and a half-full box of silver slugs for the nine-millimeter. The sound of Sam loading the magazines from the box was unnaturally loud, punctuated only by the cooing of the pigeons on the roof.

Dean exchanged the pump scatter-rifle for the breach-action and loaded it with the last two iron rounds before nudging Sam. "Load up the rifle, will ya?"

Sam nodded and pulled the Remington up through the assorted clutter by the barrel. "Didn't this used to have a scope? And what happened to the Desert Eagle?"

"Yeah it had a scope – still does, but it kept gettin' snagged in the box, so the scope's in with the camera and blacklight now. The Eagle's in the glove box. Where else would it be?" Dean replied before turning around. He'd meant to ask the group which of them knew how to shoot, but the words died in his mouth. Seven sets of eyes were staring at the arsenal housed within the Impala's trunk. "What?"

Seven pairs of eyes blinked simultaneously. Sam, busy with digging out the magazine for the .30-06, didn't look back. "What what?"

"Not you," Dean said over his shoulder. "Them. What's wrong with them?"

Sam finally located the ammo for the rifle and glanced over his shoulder, "Oh, they're probably just trying to figure out why you haven't organized this mess. I know that's what _I'm_ wondering." He checked the clip and saw it only had four rounds left before clicking it into its proper place on the gun. "Or, you know, they weren't expecting the whole hidden-arsenal-in-the-trunk thing."

Dean shrugged a little. "I suppose there is that. Anyway," he turned back to the group, "any of you actually know how to use a gun, or am I asking too much?"

"I already told you how I wasn't all that fond of firearms," Al managed to tear his gaze from the trunk long enough to answer.

"I know, I was talking more to these others here."

Martha nodded. "I'll take the pink pistol Sam was carrying when we got here." Sam handed it to her with an expression of relief at not having to deal with it any longer. Martha expertly removed the clip, checked it, then rammed the mag back into the handle before chambering a round. When she looked up, she finally saw the family resemblance in Dean and Sam's expressions. "What? I was an MP for eight years, way back when."

"Was that when the world was still in black and white?" Dean grinned at her.

"No, we had color, but it hadn't been fine-tuned yet, so everything had this weird yellow cast to it," Martha replied, matching Dean's smart-aleck tone perfectly.

Dean chuckled. "You're alright, Martha," he said before going back to handing out the weapons.

Mark once again displayed his rural upbringing in asking for the Remington by name. The pump-action Winchester went to Brooks and Miguel accepted the other shotgun after admitting that he'd been skeet-shooting several times as a teen with his grandfather.

On closing the trunk, Dean sighed and checked the time. It was only just nine in the morning. "Okay, here's the situation – we're dangerously low on ammo, I'm practically running on fumes, and it's about five hundred and twenty miles to our destination. If this were normal times, we could make it in just under nine hours, but this is anything but normal. We've got a city packed with hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of freakin' zombies to get through before we can even consider making decent time. There's about eight and a half hours of daylight left – I wanna be somewhere those damn things won't eat me in my sleep at least an hour before sunset. Our immediate goals include gas, ammo, and finding a route out of this damn death trap of a city. Any questions?"

When no one commented, Sam chambered a round in 'his' Taurus and said, "Let's see if we can find that gas pump, shall we?"

Less than half an hour later, the Impala, three motorcycles, and a tow-truck were all gassed and ready to go. With the Winchesters leading the way, they pulled out of the car lot and started making their way through the same side-streets Dean had traversed only a couple of days earlier. Passing a strip-mall whose sporting-goods store looked as though it had been gutted, Dean asked Sam if there were any honest-to-goodness gun'n'ammo stores in the area.

Sam nodded, "Yeah, I know a place. Should still be pretty untouched, too. Owner's somewhat paranoid; he got looted really bad after the last big quake."

Following Sam's instructions, Dean led the mini-caravan to a street that held innumerable shops and strip-malls; one of those commercial areas that seem to form boundaries in among the residential districts in any large city. It never really occurred to him to ask how Sam knew of this place before it was suddenly _there_, just off a main bus line and sandwiched between a biker's clothing store and a small outlet shop for one of the vineyards of Napa Valley, a sign painted directly on the brick proclaiming _Andy's Gun Works_. In fact, all Dean could really say was, "'Somewhat paranoid', Sammy?"

Sam shrugged. Sure, Andy was a nice guy and all, but he _was_ a bit nuts – there was security and then there was out-and-out paranoia. The solid steel rolling shutters over the windows and door firmly belonged to the latter, while the state-of-the-art security system, a member of the former, had been rendered on numerous occasions completely null and void during power outages. While scanning the area for zombies, Dean maneuvered the Impala through the lot – there were thirty or forty dead bodies littering the pavement, most of which were missing large portions of their skulls – and parked the car as close as he could get to the doors and still be able to make a quick getaway if need be.

"Hope you brought a cutting-torch, 'cause ain't no way I can pick _that_," Dean commented as he inspected the lock on the rolling shutter barring the door. It earned him a couple of odd looks from Al and Joe, who had followed the brothers from the car.

"No need, Dean," Sam replied, removing the one thing that had been traveling mostly unnoticed and ignored in his jacket pocket – his key ring.

"There somethin' ya wanna tell me, Sammy?" Dean asked, eyeing the key ring with something akin to distrust.

Sam rolled his eyes. "What do you think? I worked here."

"Really?" the amount of incredulity with which that one word was packed effectively conveyed Dean's disbelief. By this time, the others had joined them.

"What?" Sam bitched, undoing the lock. "Hey, I had to find work _somewhere_, and there weren't too many places that'd hire me with no work history." He pulled the shutter up as he continued, "And fast-food doesn't pay all that well. I wanted to work in the library, but unless you're majoring in Library Science, or already have a degree, they won't even look at your application." Switching keys, he undid the lock on the barred steel door, "All Andy asked was if I could tell a .22 from a .38 and if I could run a scan on the numbers for a permit-to-carry." After the lock _snicked_ open, Sam opened the door.

"That better be you, Winchester!" a deep, gravelly voice shouted from somewhere in the gloom of the store.

"Who else has keys, Andy?" Sam called back.

"Hot _damn_, kid!" There was a loud, creaking noise too big to be called a 'click' and several lights turned on. "Just _knew_ I'd be seein' you." Andy was several inches shorter and about a hundred pounds lighter than his voice indicated, though he was of an age that corresponded to his vocal chords. "Who're your buddies?"

"My brother, Dean. Some of the people I was going to school with – Miguel, Mark, Heidi, and Joe. And Al and Martha." Sam dutifully introduced everyone to Andy. "Surprised you're still here," he said to Andy.

Andy shrugged, then grinned, "Ah, fuck it if I don't think leaving's gonna solve nothin'. 'Sides, I spent twenty years buildin' this place. Didn't let m'self get run off after the last quake, didn't close down when the laws changed. _Damned_ if I'm gonna let some piece-of-shit walking corpses take it from me. Besides, I got me a stockpile of military-surplus that oughta keep me happy and healthy for close on to ten years." Dean chuckled softly, trying not to interrupt _too_ much – he kinda liked the guy. Andy paused for a moment before asking, "So, Winchester – whacha need?"

Dean took the opportunity to step forward, "Got a Colt M1911A1 that needs ammo. Also got a .22 rimfire that needs more rounds, as well as a Taurus nine-mil, a thirty-ought-six, and a Desert Eagle .44 as well as two twelve-gauge scatterguns. Wouldn't say no to some more hardware; four pistols, two shotguns, and one lone rifle for nine people just won't hack it."

"Can't say as I can argue with that," Andy allowed. "Tell ya what, I'll round up the ammo you need. You an' your brother can see about outfitting them."

With the assistance of the Winchesters, the small group soon had an assortment of guns and enough ammunition to make most third-world countries envious. They stuck to .30-06 and .22 chamberings for the rifles and twelve-gauge for the shotguns – less need to haul a multitude of different sized shells around with them; the only reason they selected a couple of .22 rifles was simply because they were much easier for a newbie to use and such a small round would be less likely to knock Heidi on her ass when fired. Insofar as handguns were concerned, the majority of them were either .45-caliber or nine-millimeter, though both women wound up with .22s.

While making sure the civs knew the mechanics of working the guns (because aim would have to come in its own time), Dean also made sure they were made aware of the two main rules of firearms: Don't Point a Gun at Anything You Don't Want Dead and Always Assume it's Loaded. It would take a while for those rules to internalize, but Dean knew that survival was a harsh teacher. The civs would either wise up quickly or they'd be dead soon enough. The older Winchester felt a pang of guilt for the thought, but dismissed it – the world had just undergone a radical shift, he would have to learn to readjust his thinking to suit.

"You might wanna see about liberatin' some of the shit from next door," Andy was talking to Sam in low tones over near the cash register.

"The wine shop? Why?"

Andy rolled his eyes. "Yeah, go bring me back a case of red." Sarcasm was definitely something that came easy to the man. "Use that brain I know you got rattlin' 'round in there somewhere, kid."

"The bike shop," Sam realized what Andy was referring to. "Yeah, I guess they could use some helmets, just in case."

Dean smirked to himself and looked across the store from where he was showing the newbies how to load a clip. "Don't think he means that, Sammy."

Sam shot a light glare at his brother. "It's Sam." _One of these days, I'll get him to call me Sam without reminding him._ "And what are you getting at?"

Dean shrugged a little, smirked, and said, "You ever try to chew through leather?" He could see Sam's stunned goldfish expression quite nicely out of the corner of his eye. As always, it never failed to warm him. _Point to the college-free Winchester. Score!_

Not much later, the group left Andy's and spent several minutes ransacking the clothing store. As he'd done at the car lot, Mark's crowbar managed to make short work of the glass door. Once everyone was encased in protective leatherwear, Dean brought out his rather impressive collection of maps and spread the city map on the hood of the Impala. "Okay, so we're here," he pointed to a confluence of streets, "and if this were six months ago, I'd take I-80 to I-5, but with things as they are, I don't think running on the interstates is a good idea."

"Yeah, I can see how that might be a problem," Joe replied, peering down at the map. "Were you plannin' on going around the bay, or did you want to take a chance on one of the bridges?"

"Good question. If it were just me, I'd head back the way I came, but that would probably take a full two or three days at this point. With there being this many of us, I'd rather we were out of the city as soon as possible." Dean scratched the back of his neck. "I know the army was keeping the Bay Bridge cleared to civilian traffic, but there's no telling what they left behind when they pulled out of here. Might be more choked than the bridges that were still open for everyone – I just don't know."

"How about hijacking a barge and just cutting straight across the bay itself?" Martha asked. The others seemed interested in this idea, but Brooks' derisive snort silenced their enthusiasm.

"Two problems with that," Dean said, looking up from the map. "First of all, I don't have a freakin' clue how to drive a boat – how 'bout you? More importantly, _anything_ that can float has already been pushed out to the open ocean. The best we'd be able to hope for at this point in time is a rusted-out shipping carton that managed to evade the masses by being more useful as an anchor."

"Not to rush everyone," Mark interrupted, "but am I the only one feeling more than a little exposed out here?" He rechecked the rifle he carried.

"No, you're not the only one," Heidi shivered a little and stepped closer to Mark.

"Any ideas on where we should hole up for tonight?" Al asked.

The discussion continued for nearly half an hour before not one, not two, but _eight_ separate routes and possible destinations had been marked on the map. With the plan in place, everyone climbed into or onto their respective vehicles and Dean led them out of the strip-mall's parking lot. The mall had just vanished from their rear-view mirrors when Joe asked, "Just where the _hell_ are all the zombies? Ain't they supposed to be just as active in the daytime as at night?"

"You know, that's a very good question. Now ask me one I can answer," Al replied, staring out the window as the suburban sprawl slowly gave way to the cluster of taller and taller buildings present in the city itself.

At around three that afternoon, they stopped for lunch in a hilltop park. The bright sunshine and cloudless sky combined with the empty park and notable _lack_ of undead just added to the slightly edgy feeling prevalent throughout the group.

Dean took his can of pineapple chunks and bottle of water to the top of a kids' jungle-gym with the Remington .30-06. After bolting his own meal of canned pears, Miguel joined Dean. While mapping out routes through the city, it had come to light that the shortish brunette knew just about every street, alley, bike path, and trail through the entire metropolitan area – that knowledge had them making good time as they stuck to little-used side streets. Using a pair of binoculars, he was able to see the basic condition of both the Bay Bridge and that of Highway 101. "Looks like our best bet would be to try the Bay Bridge. Run east on the westbound lanes. 101 is nothing but total gridlock; even if the cars were moving, I wouldn't want to try my chances with the Golden Gate at this point."

While Dean and Miguel examined their options from the top of the jungle gym, the others clustered around a picnic bench a short distance away. They split the last of their food – a ragtag collection of canned fruit, jerky, and granola bars – pretty evenly among themselves. Heidi wrinkled her nose as she popped the top off the last can of peaches. "I'd give anything for a real meal – one of the pizza's from Piper's, dripping with grease and cheese…"

"What about your diet?" Joe asked, smirking at her.

She glared at him, "Fuck the diet, Reymonds. Gimme all those wonderful carbs!"

Martha chuckled a little at the byplay between Joe and Heidi. They reminded her of how her own kids used to act together. She cut off the line of thought before it could go too far, though. Her son, Emmett, had been a successful pediatrician in the D.C. area and her daughter, Loraine, worked as an interpreter for the UN in New York. She hadn't heard from either of them in over two months.

At the other end of the table from Martha, Heidi, and Joe, Mark sat scowling at his water bottle. Al, sitting across from him, flicked the bottle. "What's on your mind?"

Mark blinked and met Al's gaze, "Oh, nothing much, just that damn truck…"

"The tow-truck? What about it?"

"It ain't running like it should be; keeps losing power goin' uphill. If it weren't for all the downhill spots, I'm sure I'd be having a helluva time keeping it running."

Al echoed Mark's scowl. "Damn. What's the problem, do you think?"

Mark shook his head. "Could be any one of a hundred things, from a dirty air filter to a crapped-out catalytic converter. If it's something simple, I can get it taken care of pretty quick, so long as I've got the tools. If it does wind up being the converter, though…" he sighed. "It ain't like we can take it in to Pep Boys, now is it?"

"And it's not like we can just abandon it," Al continued the line of thought. The truck had already earned its keep three times since leaving Andy's and there wasn't any reason to think that it wouldn't be needed to clear the way again.

"At least not until we've got something to replace it with," Mark agreed, spinning the top off his bottle and taking a long drink.

As Al and Mark discussed the truck, while Dean and Miguel plotted out the best way to the Bay Bridge, and as Heidi and Joe took turns entertaining Martha with insults, Brooks simply gnawed halfheartedly on a chunk of jerky, scanning the park's perimeter. Sam was similarly keeping an eye on things. "Where the hell did you all go, you fuckers?" Brooks muttered.

"I have no idea," Sam succeeded in startling him. Brooks jumped a little, but calmed himself quickly. "But I don't like it any, that's for sure."

"You and me both."

Before Sam could say anything else, a distant rumble chose that moment to make itself heard. A confused jumble of 'what was that' and 'what the fuck' sounded from the entirety of the group.

Still peering through the field glasses, Miguel scanned the city in the direction from which the rumble sounded. He let out a low whistle. "Damn. That would've been the Transamerica Pyramid. Dunno what happened to it, but it's not there any more – just a bunch of smoke or dust."

Dean saw the same thing when he aimed the scope of his rifle in that direction. "What do you s'pose happened?"

Miguel shook his head, "No idea."

"You still have that CB, Dean?" Al asked.

Dean nodded and fished it out of his jacket. Though everyone else was wearing enough leather to give PETA pause, Dean was still wearing his jeans and canvas jacket. He tossed the radio down to the former fireman. Al turned it on and scanned through the channels. He paused on a conversation between a home base and someone who had been sent out after supplies for a moment before realizing that it wasn't what he was searching for. He stumbled two other similar conversations before finally hitting the right channel. Listening to the excited chatter on the other end told the whole story – a group of people that included a demolitions expert (or more than one, it was hard to say for sure) had found out that noise attracted the undead, and so had rigged some sort of noisemaker in the uppermost floors of the Transamerica building, waited until the sound had attracted as many zombies as could fit in the skyscraper, and then blown previously-set charges. The chatter coming from the CB estimated anywhere from fifteen to fifty thousand undead had been caught in the blast. Before turning the radio off, the group started discussing which building they wanted to try next.

"At least we know where all the fucking zombies went," Joe said as Al handed the radio back to Dean. The comment managed to wring a couple of strained chuckles out of the group.

"So, where to next, O Fearless Leader?" Al directed his comment at Dean.

The older Winchester chose not to address the smart remark. "We'll head for the bridge. If it's still early enough when we get there, we'll cross today. If it's not…then we'll find a place to hole up for the night and cross it first thing tomorrow."

"We've got a couple of other problems that need addressed," Brooks mentioned.

Dean wasn't too sure how or why he was elected the leader of their little group, and was of two minds about it. On one hand, it made it easier to get them to listen to him, but on the other, he would have much rather they'd picked Brooks – the beanpole had far more experience with zombies than he did. But then again, Brooks was just prickly enough that nobody really wanted to trust him with their lives. He gave a mental sigh and asked, "Like what?"

"First off, we need to stop somewhere and get some first aid stuff. The virus that caused all this," he jerked his chin in a motion that seemed to encompass the whole of the world at that moment, "is a real bitch. Any cuts or scrapes we wind up with are nothing more than a giant welcome mat to it. You get infected, you're one of _them_ inside three days. Best thing to get would be liquid bandages, followed by some general antibiotics. Vitamins wouldn't be out of the question, either. I don't see any of us eating balanced meals in the immediate future."

"Speaking of eating," Martha edged into the conversation, "we've got about six bottles of water left, and no food."

Mark raised a hand and stepped forward, "And, on top of all that, the tow-truck's not in the best of shape. I'll need a couple of hours of light to see if it's something I can fix or not."

Dean mentally sighed again. "Will it hold out for today?"

Mark shrugged, "I don't know for sure, but I think so."

"Okay then… New plan: We'll aim in the direction of the bridge. If we happen across a place we can stock up on food and first aid, we'll stop and do so. I want to find a place to stop for the night by five o'clock, and," he checked his watch, "it's just coming up on three-thirty now. That should give us enough time to secure where we'll be sleeping and give us enough time to check out the truck. At some point, we should see if we can find enough CBs for everyone."

With that, the group splintered. While the others cleaned up from their sparse meal, Dean, Miguel, and Mark clustered around the city map and plotted out a course that would hopefully lead them to everything they needed. They were hoping to reach a block of apartment buildings not far from the bridge itself; the general plan was to use the fire escape to reach the roof and camp there for the night, but Dean figured he'd be happy with anything above street-level, so long as it was relatively secure.

As Sam tossed the last of the empty cans and bottles in a nearby trashcan, he noticed a ten-dollar bill fluttering on the ground. He started to reach for it, but suddenly stopped himself. Half a heartbeat later, he went ahead and picked it up. He stared at the portrait of Alexander Hamilton for a long moment, before methodically crumpling the bill and tossing it in the trash can.

* * *

**A/N2:** Am I the last person who knows English that knows the actual definition of 'prodigal'? I keep seeing it in places where its proper usage has been completely torn to shreds. The word means '_wastrel_' not '_prophesized_'. I wish authors would check a dictionary if they're not totally sure of the definition of the word they want to use (this isn't limited to fandom, either – I've seen it used to mean 'foretold' in published works by professional authors).

_Sighs and climbs off of soapbox._

I just wanted to take a quick moment to thank everyone who has reviewed, including you anonymous posters. Just wanted everyone to know I appreciate your encouraging words and that I love hearing what you think. And to all you lurkers out there that read and don't review, don't think your presence has gone unnoticed. I keep tabs on my hit- and reader traffic counters, too, you know!

Anyway, for fans of my other WIPs, I hope to have updates to all of them up sometime within the next week or two, so keep an eye out!


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer:** This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by Max Brooks; various publishers including, but not limited to, Three Rivers Press, Crown Publishing Group, and Random House, Inc. This story is also based on characters and situations created and owned by the writers, producers, et al of the television show 'Supernatural', including, but not limited to, the CW network and Eric Kripke. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, internet persona, or other being, living or dead, is completely coincidental and unintentional unless otherwise noted.

**A/N:** I have no idea if Welsh Street in San Francisco has a mom'n'pop pharmacy anywhere along its length, as I completely made that bit up. I also don't know if the buildings on that strip of road include mid-rise apartments or not. If anyone out there is reading this, just assume they do. As far as the stuff they grab from the pharmacy in this chapter is concerned, my mom's the one who told me they'd find all that there (she was an RN before she retired). Personally, I'm a little skeptical on some of it, but since Google has proven once again that it hates me, I'm willing to suspend disbelief.

Just a reminder: This tale is completely AU. It takes place while Sam's at Stanford, before he met Jessica.

This story is rated M for language, gore, and violence. Happy reading!

* * *

**Redefining Perceptions of Insanity**

**Chapter Five**

The apartment was cheerfully bright; late afternoon sunlight streamed through the gauzy yellow curtains in the kitchen and ricocheted off of a strategically-placed decorative mirror that cast the bright light directly into the living room where it struck an assortment of leaded crystal shapes strung on fishing line from hooks in the ceiling. The warm, inviting, and cheerful atmosphere was a direct counterpoint to the thoughts chasing themselves through Brent Anson's brain.

Foremost in his thoughts was a tired, all-pervasive worry for his sister. Her fever was getting worse, and even Brent knew the red lines creeping up her arm were bad news. He wasn't sure what to do about it, though. He wasn't a doctor – hell, he barely got through the frog in high school biology without puking – and found himself somewhat out of his depth. They'd used the last of the hydrogen peroxide on the wound the night before, not that it did much good. The Neosporin was gone, too, and the only thing left in the apartment that might help was a bottle of Stolichnaya Keri's fiancé had brought back after a sightseeing trip to St. Petersburg last summer, but Brent wasn't sure if using the booze to clean the wound would help. What if using booze like that was just an invention of Hollywood? He didn't want to make things worse.

Brent had given up worrying about his mom. Neither he nor Keri had heard from her since before everything had gone all skewed, and personally, Brent felt that they weren't likely to hear what had happened to her. She might have made it out of the city on one of the ships or she might have gotten in with one of the military relocations or she could be wandering the city with the other undead; it didn't particularly matter any more. Brent had bigger issues to think about, for all that worry about his family is what had brought him back to San Francisco in the first place.

"Danny!"

"Damn it," Brent muttered. He hurried to where his sister was bundled up on the sofa. She was thrashing around, speaking unintelligibly in her sleep, save for the occasional shout of her fiancé's name. "Hush, sis. You're dreaming. It's just a bad dream." He ran a cool, wet washcloth over her face as he spoke. Her eyes fluttered open.

"Brent? Why're you here?"

"Keri, you're sick." He sighed. This would mark the fifth time Keri'd asked. "Remember?"

"Sick?" Her eyes fluttered around the room for a moment. "We're at Mom's?"

"Yeah. You think you could drink some water for me?"

She nodded and Brent held a glass to her lips. She choked a little on her first sip. After a couple of swallows, she turned her glazed blue eyes on him. "Where's Danny?"

Brent winced. That was the ninth time she'd asked about her fiancé. "He's…out, sis. Just lay back and try and rest, okay? You'll be better soon," he smiled bitterly at her. _I hope._

After making sure that Keri seemed to be resting comfortably for the time being, Brent headed for the kitchen window. He hadn't yet screwed up enough courage to climb out on the fire escape. The mindless thumps and bumps from the apartments both above and below his mom's was enough to keep him inside, but he did open the window. The fresh air helped make things seem not quite so horribly wrong; even the oddly sweet smell on the breeze helped wash away the lingering sour stench of _sick_. Had Brent been a little less a child of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, he likely would have been able to identify that rich, thick stench in the air as that of death, but as it stood he had no idea and only knew he preferred the faint cloying odor outside to the air within the apartment.

Brent only looked out the window for a few moments – only long enough for his gaze to drift to the pharmacy across the street and up the block a few doors. _Might as well be on the moon for all the good it'll do me. Besides, it's not like I know what to give her, though some more hydrogen peroxide just might help some. Maybe._ "Fuck-all, I don't know what to do." He slumped against the counter, letting the light breeze play across his skin as it billowed the gauzy yellow curtains his mom had dragged from apartment to apartment ever since before he could remember. _Damn it… I wish… I mean, what the hell is going on? Three months ago, all I had to worry about was passing Doc Hubert's final, and now what? Now, my sister's sick and probably dying, my mom's missing and likely dead, and the whole fucking world's gone off the deep end…_ He was so caught up in his thoughts, he didn't hear the sound of motors outside. _I don't dare go outside – there's too many damn _things_ wandering around; even if there's less now than a week ago. Where the hell'd they all go? Wonder if it had anything to do with that tremor we had earlier today… Nah. Come on, Brent. What the hell would an earthquake have to do with anything else that's been happening? Nothing, that's what. Just more shit piled on an already full load._

A distant gurgle from his stomach momentarily diverted his attention from his worries. "Shut up. I'll feed you later." Sadly, his stomach didn't respond well to direct orders – it never had. Brent sighed again and lethargically opened a cupboard. He took down the half-empty jar of peanut butter and unscrewed the lid. _I'd give my right nut for a decent cheeseburger and some chili-cheese fries._ Wrinkling his nose at the oily, sugary mass inside the jar, he sighed yet again and retrieved a spoon from the drawer next to the sink. _I hate peanut butter._ Some unconscious portion of Brent's brain took notice of the sound of engines drawing closer, but, as a city kid, the sound had yet to penetrate through to his thoughts.

He scraped a spoonful of brown glop out of the jar and reluctantly raised it to his mouth. "I really hate peanut butter." He steeled himself for the all-too-familiar flavor and opened his mouth. Just milliseconds before the spoon carrying its goopy brown globule could enter his mouth, a loud _bang_ pierced the quiet. Brent startled, shrieked a little – though he'd deny it if anyone ever said as much – and the spoon went flying out the open window, narrowly missing the gauzy yellow curtains flapping in the breeze.

It tumbled end-over-end, sunlight glinting off the steel spoon, until it landed with a plop and a light spatter of greasy goo.

* * *

_Definitely gonna hafta see about gettin' a different truck,_ Dean thought as Mike pulled the tow to a stop next to the Impala, _Losing power, now backfire? That's not an easy half-hour fix and it ain't worth it, not when there's no shortage of vehicles._ That was as far as his brain got before something splatted down right in the middle of his field of vision. His first instinct was to curse the birds, but then reason kicked in and whispered _bird shit isn't brown_.

"That's one big-ass bird," Joe said, giving voice to the flicker of thought that had run through Dean's brain.

"Bird droppings are white, not brown," Sam replied, the corners of his mouth threatening to pull back into a smile which would wind up earning him a swat from Dean.

"Is that a _spoon_?" Al asked, leaning forward and peering through the muck that was slowly trying to creep down the windshield.

It was. Dean could see that it was. And that meant someone had desecrated his baby. Which further meant that same someone was about to have himself a meet'n'greet with Dean's right fist. Dean didn't say anything, merely opened his door, got out of the car, and snatched the spoon off the windshield. The odor was definitely peanut butter, and from the way it had tried to splatter, it was the cheap kind that tended to turn overly oily in warm weather. He looked up and down the street, hoping to spot where it might have come from and spotted the most likely candidate just across the street – an open window on the fourth floor. There was even a fire escape handy to assist him in his ass-kicking endeavors. Awesome. Had Sam been able to see Dean's face at this point, he would have recognized the tight little smirk that Dean always sported just before electing to rearrange someone's features into something worthy of Picasso. But Sam couldn't see Dean's face – not that it mattered much, he knew that steady, deliberate pace Dean was using to cross the street.

"Where's he going?" Joe asked.

Sam allowed the threatening smile to surface and chuckled. "Um…bird hunting."

"Fuckin' condors – knew protecting them was a bad idea," Joe joked.

"I didn't know they liked shiny shit – are they related to magpies?" Al added. By the time the rest of the group gathered to ask Sam what his brother was doing, the three remaining passengers in the Impala were convulsing with laughter.

Dean distantly heard his brother's laughter and filed it away in a distant corner of his mind for later. He jogged the last few steps to the area under the fire escape and used a turned-over shopping cart as a springboard to catch the lowest rung of the ladder. Once safely on the fire escape proper, he didn't change his pace and deliberately climbed up the switchbacked stairs. On the landing for the third floor, he noticed motion out of the corner of his eye and his feet halted. Momentarily distracted from his goal, he turned to see what had caught his attention.

Through the glass, he could see a standard apartment kitchen. Pacing back and forth through spilled flour, sugar, and broken glass was a naked woman. Had the woman been even remotely pretty, Dean might have considered this just payment for how his car had been defiled by an unworthy condiment, but the woman had to have been pushing seventy – what wasn't saggy was wrinkled – and it definitely didn't help any that there was a large chunk missing from her hand, nor the fact that both forearms sported long gashes. All this processed in his mind in mere milliseconds, and then he acted. He removed his Colt from where it had been riding at the small of his back and fired through the glass even as the woman opened her mouth to let out that fucking _moan_. The glass shattered and a neat hole appeared just above and between her eyes and a spray of dark slime splattered across the cabinets behind her.

At the sound of what he assumed to be a second gunshot, Brent gathered what remained of his shredded courage and managed to poke his head out the open window. What he saw had him smiling in relief for all of five seconds – _help's here, help's here, fuckin'-A, help is here_ – before the guy in the jeans and the dark blue jacket looked up at him. The grin on the guy's face sent a chill down Brent's spine. His eyes flicked from the man's grin to the shiny gun in his hand and back to the grin. The man held up his other hand and said, "Hi there! This yours?" before starting up the last bit of stairs before the landing just outside Brent's window.

Brent swallowed and forced himself to look at what else the lunatic was carrying. It was a spoon. A very familiar spoon. _So that's where it went_. He nodded.

"Thought it might be," the guy continued and was now only a few feet away.

Brent cleared his throat, "Thanks, I guess, for bringing it back…"

"Don't thank me yet," the guy replied, ducking under the window sash. It just wasn't possible to get decent leverage punching downwards and across a good three feet of window ledge and counter. He eased through the opening and landed lightly on the linoleum. "It landed on my _car_."

Now Brent wasn't stupid, for all that his sister kept harping on how she got the looks _and_ the brains in the family, and had been in more than his fair share of fights, and so knew the look of someone determined to take payment for some insult – imagined or real – out on a guy's hide. He figured that, if this guy was as dedicated to his wheels as Brent was himself, then he probably deserved one hit. So, that was all he was going to let the guy have. If the dude took it further than that…well, let's just say that Brent knew a thing or two about fighting dirty.

The guy got as far as clenching his fist before the two of them were interrupted by a hoarse shout of 'Danny!' from the living room. Dean had even started to swing, but the punch didn't land – _Damn, peanut butter dude is fuckin' _fast_. Surprised there wasn't a smoke outline like in those old Wyle E. Coyote cartoons._

Dean maneuvered himself over to the kitchen doorway and looked through it. Peanut butter dude was kneeling beside a hideously floral sofa on which laid a blanket-wrapped bundle with long blonde hair. His 'I'm-gonna-fuck-you-up' smirk morphed into something a bit more lecherous when the girl kicked off the thick blankets she was wrapped in. Unlike the crone downstairs, _this_ was something he could get behind looking at. She was in a pair of pink girl-boxers and a white tank-top that had been sweatted delightfully see-through. He almost didn't even notice the bandage wrapped around her right forearm. "Dude, you've definitely got good taste."

Peanut butter dude glared over at him, "You didn't just imply I'm dating her, did you?"

Dean's grin grew, "So, she's single?"

The glare coming from the dude ratcheted up a notch. "She's my baby sister." The protective growl came through loud and clear.

Dean's grin evaporated. "Sorry, man." He looked a little closer at the girl, who was mumbling something incoherent. "What's wrong with her?"

"She's sick," her brother replied. "You wouldn't happen to be a doctor, would you?"

Dean shook his head. "No, sorry." He took a couple of steps into the room, sliding his pistol back into the waistband of his jeans. "But maybe I can help anyway."

Brent was to the point he would have let Charles Manson take a look if it would help Keri, so he nodded. "You still gonna hit me for the peanut butter?"

"That depends," Dean replied, closing the distance to the couch.

"On what?"

"Was it on purpose?"

"No."

"Then I figure we're square. One unintentional defiling of my car equals one unintentional incest innuendo."

For the first time in a solid three days, Brent smiled wholeheartedly. "Makes sense to me."

Dean peered down at the girl on the sofa. "What happened?"

Brent's smile disappeared. "Keri hurt her arm three days ago and it got infected. I tried to clean it out, but Mom – this is Mom's place – doesn't keep a whole lot of first aid stuff on hand. Mom was always more of the 'ounce of prevention' camp than the 'pound of cure'."

While Brent spoke, Dean laid his hand on the girl's forehead. Yeah, she was running hot. His brain started compiling a mental list of stuff to bring back from the pharmacy even while the rest of him realized that Keri was really pretty – _She kinda looks like a blonde Alyssa Milano_ – not gorgeous, no, but appealing in a girl-next-door kind of way. "She needs something to knock the fever down."

"I know. Like I said, Mom doesn't keep a whole lot of stuff like that on hand. Only thing I could find was a half-empty bottle of Sudafed."

Dean flicked his gaze back to the guy. "No aspirin?"

"None."

Dean muttered something Brent couldn't quite catch, something about freaks, as he reached down for Keri's right arm. It was wrapped from the elbow to the wrist with what Dean had assumed was a bandage until he got a close look at it. What it proved to be was a strip of pale yellow cloth, probably torn from a sheet, and speckled with tiny little pink flowers. Dean quickly had it unwound from her arm, revealing a layer of folded-over paper towels beneath it. He gently removed the towels, wincing a little as small bits of them stuck to the wound.

It was, in a word, gross. Simultaneously crusty and oozing, a collection of shades of purple, green, yellow, and red; just looking at it was enough to make Dean's arm ache in sympathy. A couple of inches down from the outer bend in her elbow, an oblong of flesh had been removed. A split strip of skin about eight inches long trailed down the pinky-side of her arm towards her wrist. A lacy network of red tracings latticed outwards and trekked across otherwise healthy-looking skin all the way up to her shoulder; one particularly adventurous thread had made it as far as the outer edge of her collar bone.

Dean hadn't known precisely what to expect, not when the girl's brother had only told him that she'd hurt her arm – that she'd broken it, maybe, or that she'd cut it pretty bad – what he saw was neither of those things. _Damn it, that's a fucking bite._ He may not have grown up hunting zombies regularly (and those undead he _had_ hunted weren't exactly of the same type as the current crop), but he'd seen enough in the preceding weeks to know that a bite from one was more than just bad news.

Brent watched as the guy unwrapped Keri's arm with a combination of quick efficiency and gentleness that spoke of practice in such things; it made him wonder if maybe the guy _was_ involved in medicine, if not an actual doctor – maybe an EMT or something like that. He also saw the moment where the guy realized just what had happened to Keri. He spoke before the guy could go for that gun he'd been carrying earlier. "It's not what you're thinking."

"Really? 'Cause I'm thinking it's a _bite_."

Brent rubbed a tired hand across the back of his neck. "Well, it is, but it wasn't one of those _things_ that did it…" He trailed off as the guy looked up at him with an amused smirk on his face. "Oh, please! Wasn't me, either, so wipe that thought right outta your head. It was her fiancé."

"And you're sure he wasn't–"

"Damn straight I'm sure. Look, it's a really long story, and I'd rather not go into it at all, but it all boils down to the fact that _the dead don't fucking bleed_. So it's not _that_, just normal shit, something that could've been taken care of in a few minutes at any ER in the country before…"

Dean stood. "Yeah. Before. Got a feeling we're all gonna hate that word by the end of the week. Hell, I _already_ hate it."

"I know what you mean." Brent sighed. "So…now what?"

Dean looked around the room. "You up for company tonight?"

"Not really, but since it's been a full three days since I've seen anyone but Keri here, I'm not gonna bitch. Especially if you can help her."

"Fair enough." Dean glanced at his watch. "Okay, so here's the plan. I'm gonna go talk with my brother and the others and pick up a few things from that pharmacy across the way. There a grocery store anywhere nearby?"

Brent thought hard for a full minute before replying. "I think so. Just up the street four or five blocks or so. I think it's just on the other side of I-80. I'm not totally sure, though. Mom moved here after I left home and I've only been to visit a few times. If it is where I'm remembering, it's a Whole Foods Market."

"I'll check it out. Figure on seeing me again in about an hour, maybe an hour and a half. I'll send up some of the group I've got with me soon as I get back to them, though," Dean said, heading for the window in the kitchen.

The guy had already climbed out onto the fire escape and was halfway down to the street before Brent realized that he didn't know his name.

Dean unlatched the fire escape's ladder and rode it as it extended down to within a couple of feet above the sidewalk. Another glance at his watch told him that there were just about forty-five minutes of daylight left and that he'd only been sidetracked for about ten minutes or so. It was still long enough for the others to have broken the glass out of the door to the pharmacy and to have scattered within the building. "Hey! Everyone! Up here by the register!" he shouted into the deep gloom within the store.

Thirty seconds later, the rest of the group was standing in a loose circle where customers used to line up for check-out. "What's going on?" Miguel asked.

"First off, I found a place to crash for the night. Might be a little crowded, but we'll be out of the weather. Also got word that there might be a grocery store a few blocks from here. This place got anything in the way of food?"

"Just a bunch of candy," Martha replied. "There's also a selection of those protein-bars athletes like to use."

For all that Dean loved sugary goodness, he was starting to get a little burned-out on sweets in general. It had been a full week since he'd managed a meal with any appreciable meat content and nearly two weeks since he'd had onion rings. "Al, Heidi, Joe – you three are going to go across the street and up the fire escape to the open window. The _open_ window on the fourth floor, not the broken one on the third." Heidi looked like she wanted to say something but held back at the last moment. "Martha, Sam, and Miguel – why don't you see if you can find that grocery store before we lose the light? Just bring back enough for dinner tonight and breakfast tomorrow; we'll grab more when we're not racing the sun." Dean relayed the directions Keri's brother had given him.

"And what about us?" Mark asked after the others had scurried off on their errands.

"Grab some of those," Dean nodded to the spindle of reusable canvas shopping bags on the end of the counter by the register, "and come with us." Dean headed to the back of the store, retrieving his flashlight from his pocket as he did so. Brooks and Mark followed him. "Sam says you were majoring in biology?"

"Technically, it was microbiology with an emphasis on viruses," Brooks replied.

"So if someone's sick, you actually have a chance in hell of knowing what to give them?"

Brooks snorted, "Not likely. Even if things hadn't spun apart, I still wouldn't have been a doctor for at least another six years."

Dean stopped at the counter where prescriptions were filled. "You might not be a doctor, but you have been studying, right? I mean, from what Sam's told me, you were practically raised to this."

"Yeah, I know about what's going on, but that doesn't mean I know all that much about any other germs we may come across. At best, I'm a half-trained virologist."

Dean hoisted himself up on the counter. "You might not be a doc, but right now, you're the best we got. I mean, me an' Sam can throw stitches and splint a fracture and any idiot can sit concussion-watch on someone, but if it's _sick_…hell, get much beyond chicken soup and aspirin and I'm lost. Sammy's not much better off than me, even if he does go in for all that new-agey herbal crap."

Rather than boost himself over the counter like Dean, Brooks simply lifted up the section of counter that gated the walkway. "Something tells me you're not asking to cover 'just in case'."

"Nope," Dean agreed and explained about Keri's infected arm. "I know it's blood-poisoning, I just don't know what to give her for it."

"And how do you know that?" Brooks asked, looking around at the ghostly shapes of filler-bottles on the pharmacy's shelves.

Dean glared at Brooks, even though Brooks wasn't looking at him. "'Cause I've seen it before, creepin' up the back of my left leg, 'bout six years ago. Little hard to forget something like that."

"Hmm…if that's so, then she'd need antibiotics. Preferably injected. See if you can find any thing back that way with 'cillin' in the name." Brooks gestured to a wall containing baskets of little jars and vials. "They'll likely be powdered, so you'll need to grab saline and sterile water, too. If they have any, erythromycin would be best. It covers most bacterial infections out there."

Mark had followed Brooks through the gate, but though he was listening to his and Dean's conversation, he wasn't participating in it. Ever since meeting Sam's older brother, Mark hadn't been able to shake the feeling that Dean was a dangerous sort to know. It had nothing to do with the guns he'd carried in the trunk of his car – at least not wholly. There was just something indefinable about the older Winchester, something that, now that he thought about it, permeated Sam, too, though to a lesser extent. There was something about them that was like chewing tin foil. To borrow his uncle's phrasing, they were the kind of folk who could Take Care of Business, no matter what that business might be.

While Brooks and Dean turned their attention to the stockpile of medicine, Mark leaned against the counter and toyed with a quarter that had been next to the barcode reader. As he made it dance back and forth over his knuckles, he continued chasing his thoughts, occasionally exchanging an empty sack for one that now bulged with assorted whatnot. The memory he wanted was from Christmas break during his freshman year in high school – the year his family had hosted the traditional gathering of relatives for ham and turkey and pie – but that whole week was suffused with so many memories he was having difficulty filtering out the one he wanted.

"That everything?" Dean asked, breaking into Mark's thoughts.

"From back here, I think. Should grab a few things from the front of the store, too," Brooks replied.

"Shag ass then, it's starting to get fucking dark."

_Dark…that's it!_ The word managed to pull forth the memory he'd been trying to grab. He dropped the quarter as it played out in his mind. _It was what, two days 'til Christmas? Yeah. I couldn't sleep and found Grandma in the kitchen when I went after something to snack on. She pegged it when she said I couldn't sleep 'cause I was scared of Sandy. Yeah, I laughed at her for saying as much, but then she just gave me that Look, the one that even made Dad stop in his tracks. I don't remember what-all we talked about, but I remember that I admitted that Sandy scared me, but that I kinda felt sorry for her, too. Then Grandma said, 'Most folk live in the light. You, me, your friends – we all live in light and love our family and friends fiercely. Some folk, though, they live in the dark. They may've been born to the light, but at some point they've turned their back on it, and so they suffer and want everyone around them to suffer, too, and tend to be dangerous the way a rabid dog is dangerous. But there's still others out there, and Sandy's one of them, who live in that shadowy twilight between light and dark. Those are the folk you gotta watch out for, 'cause they love just as hard as those of us who live in the light, but are just as dangerous as those who live in the dark. You can pity her if you want, but not me. I'll envy her and all the others like her, 'cause folks like her? Yeah, they're the ones who change the world while the rest of us aren't looking.'_ His cousin Sandra, two years younger than he was, was another like the Winchesters, another who had that sharp, metallic overtone to her personality.

Proud of himself for finally having remembered what he was after, he leaned down to pick up the quarter and put it back on the counter where he'd found it. It may have not made much sense to do so, but the habits of a lifetime are hard to break. Under the counter, there were stacks of pharmacy paper bags, some staplers, a little basket of pens and markers, and a couple of books. Figuring that the books would likely come in handy, Mark snagged them and shoved them in one of the empty canvas sacks before hurrying to catch up with Brooks and Dean, who were now snagging things like gauze and rubbing alcohol from the non-prescription portion of the store.

"So, you ever going to tell us just why we're heading for the middle-of-nowhere, Oregon?" Brooks asked, stuffing a double-sized bottle of Tylenol in his half-full sack.

Dean shrugged, "It ain't like you got nothin' better to do, now is it? Anyway, the main reason's 'cause that's where my dad went. A friend of ours has got a pretty nice place up there – one that is probably as safe as we can get on dry land, and not just from the fucking zombies."

"That's the second time I've heard that. Sam said something similar last night. What is it about this place you're taking us that's so fucking special?"

Dean sighed a little. "It's…hard to explain. You'll understand when we get there." He stepped over to Mark and took three of the many bags he held. "There anything else we need from here?"

Brooks shook his head. "Um…don't think so. If there is, we can snag it tomorrow."

The three of them equally divided the smallish canvas shopping bags – though in this case, it might be more accurate to call them _looting_ bags – before heading out into the gloom. Halfway across the street, there was the sharp, echoing report of a gunshot from the direction of the interstate. Within microseconds of hearing the sound, the bags Dean had been carrying in his right hand had been transferred to his left and his shiny pistol was in his right. Neither Mark nor Brooks had been able to track the motion.

"You want to go see what's up?" Mark asked, offering to take the bags from Dean.

"Shh…" Dean replied, turning his head slightly to the side. When no further noises were evident, Dean thumbed the safety off of his gun and fired twice into the air. A long, tense moment later, another distant shot was heard. Dean let out a breath and returned the gun to his waistband.

"What was that about?" Brooks asked.

"Unplanned fire," Dean explained, switching some of the bags back to his right hand. "Two shots to ask if help's needed. One back for 'no', two for 'yes', and three for 'fuck yes and bring the first-aid kit'." He rolled his neck and was rewarded with several loud pops from his spine. "Looks like we're gonna need to find some more radios sooner rather than later," he said, covering the last few yards to the ladder.

* * *

The grocery store was a little hard to miss; the parking lot took up a full half a block. The doors were open. From the look of things, windblown debris had kept them from sliding shut and when the power failed, they were stuck. Stepping into the store, Sam turned to Martha and Miguel. "Okay, so let's figure out what we're after first. There's what, ten of us?"

"Yeah," Miguel replied. "Counting whoever was behind the peanut butter."

"Okay…" Sam ran a hand through his head. "Since we don't know if the stove in that apartment runs on gas or is electric, we should stick to stuff that doesn't need to be cooked. Any ideas?"

"If the fresh fruits and veggies are still good, a salad would probably go down easy," Martha said. "And corned beef sandwiches, too."

"Corned beef doesn't need cooked?" Miguel looked surprised.

Martha nodded. "If you don't get the real deal from a deli, it tends to come in cans like tuna and salmon. Mix it up a little like chicken salad and you can get six or seven sandwiches out of a can. For breakfast, we should grab a few cans of evaporated milk and some cereals. Wish we knew for sure about the stove – I don't know about anyone else, but I've been craving eggs for the last three days."

"Don't eggs need to be refrigerated?" This time it was Sam who asked the question.

"They don't get refrigerated under the chicken's ass, do they?" Martha grinned. "No, they're fine for up to about three weeks without an icebox; they don't tend to be refrigerated at all in Europe. Just have to crack them open into a separate dish before adding them to the pot if it's coming up on close to their 'expiration' date."

"I didn't know that," Sam said. "Anyway, why don't you check the fresh stuff. I'll see what they've got in canned goods. Miguel, you go see if there's any bottled water left. Maybe some juices, too."

"I'd rather have beer."

"You and me both, but there isn't any ice, you know."

"Gross." Grimacing at the idea of warm beer, Miguel picked up one of the little plastic shopping baskets and headed deeper into the store. Martha followed his example and headed for the collection of fruits and vegetables. Sam bypassed the baskets and grabbed some plastic bags from a checkout counter before following the signs hanging from the ceiling to the canned goods aisles. It wasn't as dark as it could have been – the roof of the store sported numerous opaque white 'skylights' – and for that, Sam was grateful. He doubted that anyone but Dean had thought to bring a flashlight with them.

Most of the freshies were anything but. The lettuce was brown and slimy; the tomatoes were wrinkled and drawing a multitude of flies. Surprisingly, most of the bananas were just at the perfect shade of yellow – _They must have been _really_ green when they were shelved._ The apples, too, seemed to be fairing well. Sweet onions and carrots and radishes and some vacuum-packed packages of 'field greens' all found themselves added to her basket. She bypassed the potatoes, for all they were still whole and sound – _You can eat raw potatoes, but who'd want to?_ Having exhausted the available fresh foods, at least those she knew she could make into something edible without a cooking surface available, she wondered what cheeses this store happened to keep in stock. Walking past the darkened freezer rows, she noticed that most of them were empty. _Stupid people. Sure, stock up on crap that needs electricity to keep proper. I just hope the stupidity extended to them _not_ taking much from the canned stuff._

The dairy section of the store _reeked_. Though there wasn't much left in the way of milk, several of the remaining cartons had split open from gas buildup in the absence of refrigeration. After a full fifteen years of having cleaned up after college kids' ideas of parties, though, Martha barely noticed. The cheese section was pretty well picked over, but in addition to the vacuum-packed strips of mozzarella sticks, there were also several wheels of Gouda, which would still be edible due to its protective wax covering.

Suddenly, a distinctive moan cut through the air within the store. Martha startled and looked around, unsure of where, exactly, it had come from. The store's high ceiling and the long aisles caused it to reverberate oddly, further adding to the confusion. She stooped and sat the basket on the floor before retrieving the little pink pistol from the pocket of her newly-acquired leather jacket.

Halfway across the store, Miguel also heard the moan, and managed to drop his own basket on the hard linoleum-over-concrete floor. A can of ginger ale burst, spraying its contents in an arch across the aisle. Slipping on the wet surface, Miguel hurried to the end of the aisle. Though he'd been meaning to head for the door, he'd accidentally managed to run the wrong way and nearly collided with Sam in front of a towering display of powdered laundry soap.

Sam clutched three plastic bags in one hand and had his gun in the other. "Come on, it came from this way!"

"But…" Miguel didn't want anything to do with getting up close and personal with the owner of that moan, but Sam wasn't slowing down any. "Damn it!" Casting a longing look towards the front of the store, he hurried after Sam.

He almost crashed into Sam a second time when Sam skidded to a halt at the end of the aisle that contained milk and eggs on one wall and a long line of ice cream freezers across from them. Though the light was dim, there was enough to permanently brand the image into his brain. The stench of sour milk was nearly suffocating at this end of the building. A zombie wearing a white button-down and a red tie had reached through the pass-through shelves that normally housed gallons of milk and had grabbed Martha. Her panicked struggling had managed to pull the zombie most of the way through the pass-through. It had one hand tangled up in her hair and the other was holding on to her upper arm. Martha was using both hands to keep the thing from pulling itself in close enough to bite her face off.

Sam's gun clicked and he shouted, "Martha! Close your eyes!" before pulling the trigger.

The bang was nearly loud enough to deafen Miguel, though that particular thought barely registered as he wished that it had blinded him instead. The bullet had gone through the zombie's temple and had managed to remove a good chunk of the other side of its head. The bloody gore joined the singularly unappetizing visual of slimetized milk gobbets oozing from broken jugs. "Huh, must've died relatively recently," Sam muttered.

Miguel couldn't help himself. He turned and vomited into a chest-cooler of butter.

"You okay?" Sam asked, directing the question to Martha.

She nodded. "Think so."

The sound of two distant, successive shots filtered into the store. "Damn it," Sam grumbled. "Be right back." A short while later, a louder shot was heard, likely fired from the parking lot. When Sam returned, he was slightly out of breath. "There anything else we want while we're here?"

Martha had lost interest in food, having almost become a meal herself, and shook her head. Miguel, similarly unhungry but for different reasons, groaned. "God, I hope not. Lemme get the shit I found, then let's get outta here."

By the time they made it back to where the Impala and motorcycles were parked, full dark had fallen on the city.

* * *

**A/N2:** I've gotten several PMs since joining the fanfiction community, however am I the only one who sees the inherent idiocy in asking questions in a PM when using a screen name where others are unable to either PM back or send an email? I like to answer questions if I can, but…I can only reply if there's something to reply to (especially since this site frowns on excessive author's notes)!

Originally, this chapter was supposed to have another scene, but I figured it fit better at the beginning of the next chapter. Besides, I want to keep on with roughly 7K words per chapter for this particular fic.

ETF: 4/23/09 - Caught a typo on a read-through and corrected it.

(insert clever review request here)


	6. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer:** This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by Max Brooks; various publishers including, but not limited to, Three Rivers Press, Crown Publishing Group, and Random House, Inc. This story is also based on characters and situations created and owned by the writers, producers, et al of the television show 'Supernatural', including, but not limited to, the CW network and Eric Kripke. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, internet persona, or other being, living or dead, is completely coincidental and unintentional unless otherwise noted.

**A/N:** This particular chapter is just a shade shorter than the average thus far for this fic, but the next scene I wanted to do would have made the chapter inordinately long and probably delayed posting by at least another week or two. I figured y'all would want a slightly shorter chapter now, rather than a really long one later.

Just a reminder: This tale is completely AU. It takes place while Sam's at Stanford, before he met Jessica.

This story is rated M for language, gore, and violence. Happy reading!

* * *

**Redefining Perceptions of Insanity**

**Chapter Six**

Al, Heidi, and Joe managed to locate the proper apartment easily. It was more by virtue of the fact that a ragged-looking man was staring out the kitchen window than by any descriptions from the older Winchester. He was about the same height as Dean – maybe a fraction shorter, but not much – and had a lean, muscular build. His light brown hair was cut shorter than Sam's but longer than Dean's and was shot through with sunstreaks of blonde that complimented the dark tan he sported along with the peeling sunburn across the bridge of his nose. His blue eyes were bloodshot and surrounded by dark circles, which when paired with the deep worry-lines gracing his forehead and his wrinkled, unkempt shirt and jeans, hinted at sleepless nights and stress. Some of the worry suffusing his posture melted a little as he greeted his visitors.

Al took the lead in introducing himself, Joe, and Heidi. After a brief uncomfortable silence, Brent asked who else they were waiting for. Joe replied, "Well, there's Mrs. Kemmel, Miguel, and Mark. Vanderhaven. And the Winchesters. They'll be up soon, I guess. Said something about getting some food and some shit from that pharmacy."

"Who was it that I talked with earlier?"

"That's Dean Winchester," Al replied.

"You know him well then?" Brent asked.

Al shook his head. "No, not really. Ran into him a couple of days ago. Seems like he knows what's what, though. Helluva good shot, too."

Brent filed that piece of information away. "You need anything to drink? Afraid I can't offer more than water or vodka, though."

Some small talk filled the empty time while they waited for the others arrived, and before long their talk turned to the hordes of undead that had shambled their way into being and brought the world to a screeching halt. Al told of how he and his crew were working the late shift when they got word to be on high-alert. As the city began its slide into chaos, one by one his men ran off, determined to get back to their families. He told of calling his wife and telling her to get out with the military evacuations just before the phone services died and how he met Dean the next day. While he spoke, Brent took a brief break from hovering over his sister to light a few candles around the room.

Al was just wrapping up how he and Dean managed to retrieve his RC helicopter and the pistol from his car when Brooks showed up in the doorway between the apartment's living room and kitchen. The walking beanpole took a quick look around the room before his gaze zeroed in on Keri. "Move it," Dean commanded from just behind him. Brooks moved out of the doorway and deposited the bags he carried on the floor near the sofa. Mark followed suit. Dean sat his own with the pile before addressing Brent. "Hey, dude?"

"Yeah?"

"You got some ziplocks handy?"

Brent shrugged, "I don't know. You'll have to check the kitchen. Mom usually kept some on hand. Don't know for sure where they'd be, though."

Dean shifted his attention to Mark. Mark nodded. "I'll check."

Kneeling among the loot from the pharmacy, Dean started sorting through the bags. "What was it you said would be best for the chick's problem?"

Brooks cleared his throat and joined Dean in sorting through the sacks. "Um… Erythromycin. Unless she's allergic to penicillin – in that case, I have no fucking clue."

"She's not," Brent spoke up from his position on the floor next to Keri's head.

"She's not what?" Mark asked, returning from the kitchen with two boxes of resealable plastic baggies, one box was of sandwich-size and the other was of galleon-size. He handed both to Dean. "This what you had in mind?"

"Yeah, thanks," Dean replied, even as Brent repeated, "Keri, she's not allergic to penicillin." Dean continued speaking to Brooks. "So, how much of it do we give her?"

Brooks shrugged. "I'm not sure. If she was a lab-rat, I could give you an answer, but she's significantly larger than a lab-rat."

"What do you mean?" Brent asked. Anything concerning his sister had his full attention at this point in time.

"Antibiotics, like any other medication, depend mostly on mass. The lab-rats I've worked with tend to come in at right around three hundred grams or so. That's just about two-thirds of a pound." Brooks didn't look up from his sorting of the miscellaneous pill-bottles. "Just why did you take what looks like every heavy-duty painkiller they had?"

Dean leveled a glare at Brooks. "Dude, have you _ever_ had a broken bone? Dislocation? Trust me – if something happens, you'll be glad I snaked 'em."

Brooks rolled his eyes a little and continued setting bottles in piles. "You find the bag with the shit we need yet?"

While Brooks and Dean sorted the stuff and talked, Mark quickly located the two books he found under the counter and started flipping through them while standing next to the wooden entertainment center – three candles of assorted sizes perched on the top shelf lending much-needed light to his reading endeavors.

Dean shook his head. "Not all of it. Oh, hey," he held up a package of gauze. "Found some of it."

"So…You two really think you can…?" Brent let the question trail off, unwilling or unable to finish it.

Dean flashed him his 'trust me' grin, but the effect was short lived as Brooks looked up. "Honestly? I have no idea. None of us are doctors – we might wind up making it worse. But Winchester here assures me he knows what's wrong, and I know a thing or two about infections, so between the two of us, there's a possibility we can cure it."

"She's not an _it_," Brent replied. His glare could have peeled Brooks' skin off, but the former bio-major seemed not to notice. "She's my little sister and her name's _Keri_, if you don't mind."

"I don't mind," Brooks retorted. He wasn't looking in Brent's direction and so missed the nearly homicidal look leveled in his direction.

"Baby, what're you doing?" Heidi asked from her place on the living room's loveseat.

Mark glanced up from the massive book he was paging through. "Oh, just looking something up." He smiled at her before returning to his self-appointed task.

Dean found the rubbing alcohol, tape, and scissors in the bottom of the bag. "Hey, Joe? You wanna give us a hand?"

Joe startled a little, not expecting to be brought into the conversation. "Um…sure. Whacha need?"

"How 'bout you take this pile and see if it'll fit in one of those big baggies?"

Joe moved around the majority of the mess before taking a seat near Dean among the bags that had yet to be sorted. Bit by bit, Brooks and Dean located the assorted items they'd need to see about curing Brent's sister. The three of them were packing away the last of the mess when Sam, Miguel, and Martha could be heard climbing through the kitchen window.

"In here, Sammy!" Dean hollered. Moments later, the younger Winchester and his fellow grocery store looters arrived in the living room.

Sam looked from where Joe, Brooks, and Dean were finishing up with the last of the stuff from the pharmacy to the obviously _very_ sick girl on the sofa before turning to Martha. "How about you and Miguel see about getting that meal together for all of us, huh?"

"Sounds good," Dean piped up as he climbed to his feet. "Sammy," he beckoned to his brother to join him and the two of them moved into the hallway which linked the living room to the flat's two bedrooms.

"What's up?" Sam asked, peering through the thick gloom of the hallway.

"Why is it things can't go easy?" Dean was whining. Sam kept a smile off his face by sheer force of will alone. "I was s'posed to snag you from the dorm and we were s'posed to take off on up to Joshua's. Three days, tops."

"Don't know what to tell you, man. But, look on the bright side – we're actually making a difference…_without_ having to resort to fake credit cards."

Dean rolled his eyes at his little brother. "Only you could find the silver lining in the end of the world."

Sam let out his smile, "What can I say? I'm just good like that." He sobered his expression when it failed to get a similar result from Dean. "Seriously, though. What's up?"

As the brothers conversed just out of earshot from the rest of the group, Al levered himself out of the armchair he'd been occupying and joined Martha and Miguel in the kitchen. Mark snatched the small vanilla-scented candle-in-a-jar and stole Al's vacated seat while continuing to flip through the massive book he'd hijacked from the pharmacy; he'd already verified that the smaller of the two didn't have the information he needed. Brooks didn't notice Mark's switch in position, nor did he notice just what his companion was doing; instead, he looked up at Brent and asked, "You got a bag or something big enough to put all this shit in?"

Brent nodded, "Yeah. I think so, anyway. Mom usually has a set of luggage somewhere. I don't know if she kept it the last time she moved or not, though."

"Ah! Knew taking this was a good idea!" Mark's shout derailed Brooks' request for Brent to go find a bag before he could get out more than 'go get'.

"What was a good idea?" Dean poked his head into the candlelit room.

"This," Mark held up the book he'd been looking through. "Grabbed this and a drug book from under the counter back there."

Though the flickering candlelight was enough to see by, it wasn't quite bright enough to make the letters on the cover legible from across the room. "Dude, can't read it from here."

"Oh, sorry. It's a Physician's Desk Reference." On hearing Mark's reply, Brooks got to his feet and seized the text.

"Dean?" Sam pulled his brother's attention back to their conversation.

Dean sighed. "Look, the more people we have with us, the longer it's gonna take to get to Joshua's place. Besides the fact we're moving slower, we hafta figure on food, gas, and all that for what? Eleven people now? And that damn tow-truck isn't gonna be much use any more."

Sam suddenly realized that though his brother _was_ whining about things, Dean did have a point. _And it's not like we can really leave them to fend for themselves – they'd all probably be dead inside three days. Well…maybe not Martha. Got the sense she's a tough one. And maybe not Brooks, either. He knows what's going on, after all. But the rest? Yeah._ Sam echoed his brother's sigh. "I know. It's going to be rough, but what are we going to do? Leave them here?"

Dean brightened at the suggestion. "Can we?" Sam merely stared at him until his false cheer at the thought dimmed. "Yeah, no. We can't."

After a brief moment of silence, Sam asked, "What's wrong with the girl on the couch?"

"Don't know the whole story, but she got a chunk taken out of her arm and those nasty little red lines are starting to take over."

Sam hissed through his teeth. "Damn."

"Right."

"Well…let's just take things one step at a time."

Dean nodded. "Yeah. Fix her up as good as we can. Then some supper, some sleep, and tomorrow we'll see if we can maybe locate a replacement for the truck."

The brothers reentered the living room just in time to see Brooks jump back away from Keri's unconscious form on the sofa with a startled string of words that might have been Japanese while he groped along his belt for that weird-ass dagger he carried. "Whoa, there, stretch," Dean hurried across the room.

"It's a fucking _bite_," Brooks said, glaring at his former roommate's brother. He managed to unsnap the clasp holding the sheath of his weapon closed. "Can't cure a fucking _bite_."

"Calm down," Dean shot a half-smile at Vanderhaven. "Already been over this with her brother – she wasn't bit by one of _them_."

Brooks spun a little and targeted his glare on Brent. Brent was sitting on the arm of the sofa, one hand on his sister's shoulder and the other curled into a tight fist. Dean was pretty sure the guy could lay Brooks flat with one punch – freaky dagger or no freaky dagger. "And just how the _fuck_ are you so goddamn sure?"

"Because," Brent said calmly, "like I told your buddy earlier, the dead don't fucking bleed." It was clear from Brooks' expression that he didn't believe Brent's explanation, but before Brent could clarify his remark, Martha announced that supper was ready. Dean exchanged a quick glance with Sam, who nodded and began shooing Joe, Mark, and Heidi out of the room, asking that they set aside enough for himself, Dean, Brent, and Brooks.

When the rest had exited, Brooks looked from Keri to Brent and back several times. "Well?"

"Well what?" Brent replied.

"You going to tell us what the fuck happened or not?"

Brent sighed and pushed himself to his feet. "It was about seven or eight days ago – it's a little hard to pin down, everything's been so completely screwed up for so long…" he ran a hand through his hair and winced a little as his fingers caught on a snarl. "Anyway, I'd been down in Cleremont, just outside LA, for the past three years. I work construction and the company I'd hired on with had been contracted for some major renovations to the Cleremont College Complex – the original plan had us there for a total of five years, but I don't think my boss is going to have much to say about me cutting out early."

"You going to come to the point any time soon?" Brooks couldn't help needling the poor guy.

"Shut up and lemme tell it in my own way," Brent sniped back. "When things in LA started runnin' crazy, I figured I'd best be getting outta there while I could. I needed to make sure that Mom and my sis managed to escape the shit, you know? So I came up, fast as I could. Got a call from my sis on my cell when I was still a full day out, told me that Mom wasn't at her apartment. I told her to hang on and stay here until I got here, then we could maybe figure things out. She didn't listen. Shoulda known better – she _never_ listens to me. Anyway, by the time I got here, she wasn't here any more. That woulda been about five days ago, I think. Maybe six. I was just about to turn around and head out to look for her when she called me again, told me she needed some help with her fiancé, that he wasn't actin' right. I met 'em halfway between their place and here and damn if she hadn't tied her fiancé up like some sorta kidnapee. I was all for leaving the guy behind. I mean, I didn't know him, and there had to be some reason he was tied up, right? I thought at the time that he'd been turned into one of those _things_, but, though he acted like one, sis was so _damn_ sure he hadn't been bit –"

"Quisling," Brooks interrupted, drawing similar 'what the _fuck_' looks from both Dean and Brent. Sam vaguely recalled reading something on the term, somewhere, but he couldn't pull up the details. "Lemme guess, he got loose, zombied-out on the girl, and only _after_ you bashed in his skull with a baseball bat did you realize that she was right and he _wasn't_ one of the hordes of undead skulking their way through the city?"

Brent blinked. "Well, it was a kitchen knife, not a bat – I stabbed him in the chest – but I suppose it's close enough. What's 'Quisling' though?"

"Don't remember the origin of the word," Brooks looked a little bored as he explained, "only Dad's team hijacked it to refer to someone who can't hack Z-shock. It's like when hostages start working with their captors. An 'if you can't beat them, join them' mentality. Your sister's fiancé just plain couldn't deal with what he saw as the end of the world, so his brain turned off all systems that were considered nonessential to survival, in the mistaken impression that imitating a zombie can fool it into not eating you. If it helps any, you probably did the guy a favor by killing him. As far as I know, there's no real cure for going Quisling – _and_ he won't be getting back up to go snack on any survivors out there, us included." He returned his attention to the girl on the sofa. "Now that I know it's not solanum, _maybe_ we can fix it. I'm not gonna promise _anything_, though." Brooks knelt next to the unconscious girl and began looking over the bite wound in a bit more detail. "There a flashlight in this place?"

"Yeah," Dean replied, digging it out of his pocket. He directed the beam where Brooks indicated. Kneeling on the floor, Brooks consulted a chart in the PDR before measuring out a quantity of powder from the erythromycin bottle. He then mixed it with saline. After stripping the packaging from a syringe, he drew the liquid into the needle, and handed it to Sam.

"Hold that a minute." It didn't take more than a few seconds for Brooks to open an alcohol wipe and clean a spot on the girl's shoulder. She murmured something and turned her face away from the back of the sofa.

Sam nearly dropped the syringe. "_Keri_?" Though her hair was a tangled mess and partially blocking her face from view, even in the dim light of the room, Sam could recognize her.

Before Sam could move, Dean's flashlight beam was hitting him squarely in the face. "Dude, you know her?"

Sam nodded, and handed the syringe back to Brooks. "Yeah. My roommate last year, Dan…she's his fiancé."

"Hey, need some light here," Brooks snapped from his position on the floor.

"'Aziz, light,'" Dean grumbled as he swung the flashlight back to Keri's shoulder.

Sam continued with his little explanation as Brooks stuck the needle into Keri and slowly depressed its plunger. "Met her a couple of weeks after she and Dan started dating October-before-last. She's almost as good at pool as you are, Dean." He grew quiet when he suddenly realized that _Dan_ was the one who'd bit her, and the fact that any lingering hope he might have had that his friend had made it out of the city was completely crushed – Dan was nothing more than a rotting corpse at this point.

Brooks peeled a band-aid from its wrapper and stuck it over the pinprick mark left by the needle before massaging the injection site for a moment. He re-capped the needle and collected the wrappers before standing and depositing the trash in a small garbage can that sat between the sofa and loveseat. "That's about all I know how to do for her. If you can rouse her long enough to swallow, you might want to give her something like Tylenol, but there's not much else I can do."

Dean handed the flashlight to Brooks, "Your turn to play lamppost." He had just started to take Brooks' place on the carpet next to the couch when Sam stopped him.

"Hang on. My stitches are better than yours and you know it."

Dean leveled a 'you have got to be kidding me' look at his brother. "In your dreams, Sammy."

"It's _Sam_. Seriously, though. You know they are. Besides, she's a friend of mine."

Dean shook his head a little, "But you haven't had to stitch anyone for almost a full two years now."

"It's not the kind of thing you forget, Dean."

Figuring that Sam probably had a point – and, yeah, if he was honest with himself, Sammy's stitches had always been just a little smaller, a little more even than his own, but he sure as hell wasn't going to admit as much out loud – Dean merely stepped back and let Sam take over. "If she starts to come around, I'll hold her still for you."

Sam nodded to show he'd heard, but was busy lining up the things he'd need. It had only taken a cursory glance to tell him that he was going to have to trim away the edges of the split in her skin that ran from the bite nearly to her wrist – it had dried out too much for it to heal properly. Sam could almost see how the split had formed in his mind; Dan gone stark raving psycho and attacking Keri, Keri throwing her arm up to protect her face, Dan sinking his teeth into the soft part of her forearm just below her elbow and tearing out a chunk. Tearing out a chunk, yes, but not cleanly. Skin tended to be surprisingly stubborn at times, and this would have been one of those times, and a narrow strip would have clung to that chunk of removed flesh, stretching and narrowing until it managed to snap amid free-falling blood. Sam forcibly pushed his all-too-real imaginings away and refocused on the task at hand.

He began by draining the pus-pockets he could see in the bite itself. It was gross and disgusting and smelled really _really _bad and made Sam grateful he'd not yet had supper, but he got through it. Moving on, he rinsed the shallow depression with hydrogen peroxide. The fizzing of it reacting with the infection had Keri twitching, but she didn't wake up. After what felt like an eternity of dealing with the peroxide – but was in reality only about twenty minutes – Sam gently patted the wound dry before wetting down several gauze squares with saline and setting them in the bite. A dry gauze square was quickly taped over the bite to hold everything in place.

"No antibiotic cream?" Brent asked, causing Sam to startle a little – he'd nearly forgotten that Brent was still in the room.

Sam shook his head and reached for the pair of bandage scissors among his supplies. "No. Shouldn't need it, not since we're giving her real antibiotics. Besides, you're not supposed to use stuff like Neosporin on open wounds like this." Sam tested the sharpness of the scissors blades with his thumb before setting them back on the floor. He looked over his shoulder at Dean, "Give me your knife." Dean removed the small knife he almost always carried in his boot from its place and handed it to Sam without a word. Sam used an alcohol wipe to clean off the blade and then set to trimming the dried-out edges off of the split in Keri's skin that trailed from the bite nearly to her wrist. He made sure to cut the dead skin away far enough from the edge that the wound began to bleed again.

"Why –"

Sam cut Brent's question off before it could get any further, "Because I'm going to put in some stitches. It's been long enough that if I'd just stitched it as it is, it never would have healed right – the edges of her skin had died. Since I'm cutting that portion away, it'll now heal properly and won't scar as bad as leaving it would have done." He finished trimming both sides of the split about the same time as he finished his explanation. The stitches didn't take long, and when all of them were tied into place, a roll of gauze was used to cover Keri's arm from her elbow to her wrist. Sam cleaned off Dean's knife and handed it back to his brother before cleaning up the garbage.

"Do you really think she'll be okay?" Brent asked, his eyes flicking from Dean to Brooks to Sam and back.

Dean looked to his brother and while they were still silently arguing over who got to tell the guy they had no clue if Keri would be okay, Brooks scoffed. "Fuck, I don't know. If she manages to kick the infection…" Brooks noticed Brent's expression begin to crumple and actually managed to dig deep and briefly reconnect with his inner humanity. He sighed. "Look. She's damn lucky it missed all the major veins and arteries, not to mention the muscles. She'll have one helluva scar, but it shouldn't fuck the use of her hand any. Oh, and she's gonna have to wait a year and bring along proof of negative tests for hepatitis before donating blood."

It had the desired effect and managed to startle a small smile out of Brent. "Okay, I know I'm being somewhat…overprotective, but can I ask one more question, or would that be pressing my luck?"

"What?" Both Winchesters were pretty sure Brooks wanted to hit the guy.

"Just how do you know that erith…airith…that whatever you gave her will work?"

Something rather rare occurred in the heartbeats before Brooks replied – a tiny, self-depreciating little smile appeared on his face. "I make it a point to learn all I can about any drugs I've had to take."

"And you had to take that…fuck it, I'll never say it right. But you had to take it?"

Brooks nodded. "Yeah. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you want to know why?"

"I am curious."

"It's used to treat," Brooks rolled his eyes, "gonorrhea. Dad learned the hard way not to leave a sixteen year-old to his own devices for a week in Singapore."

* * *

It was probably one of the most beautiful days Keri had ever seen. Even growing up in California, there were only a handful of truly glorious days that any given person lives through; where the sky is a bright and blameless blue, spotted with only those fluffy popcorn-style clouds that blow off somewhere else before gathering together to rain, the sunlight is clear and warm, and there is just enough of a breeze to keep the air from feeling stale. It was one of those kind of days to begin with, but this day in particular had something else going for it. Keri didn't know quite how to put it into words, but she'd managed to hit all the green lights on her way in to school that morning. Once she got to the campus, she'd also managed to snag her favorite parking spot – the one that was first in the row, excluding the handicapped places, just outside the building where her last class of the day was held. Her first class, a lab, was filled with jokes and laughter as all the students (as well as the prof) seemed to have been infected, so to speak, by the beautiful day outside the windows. The cafeteria had her favorite – chicken nuggets – as the daily special, followed by an afternoon lecture held outside, in the shade of ornamental orange trees. She also managed to hit all the green lights as she made her way from the campus to Zeb's to meet up with Dan. It really was the perfect day.

She couldn't shake the thought she was forgetting something, regardless of how perfect the day was. Sharing a pizza with Dan, followed by some dancing, the thought kept resurfacing like a persistent mosquito on a hot summer night.

Enjoying an icy cold drink on Zeb's balcony, watching the sun set over the city and, way out on the edge of visibility, the Pacific, Dan wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "You okay, sweetheart?"

Keri smiled and turned her head to look up at her fiancé. "Of course I am, hon." But she wasn't. Not really. There was something she needed to remember, but try as she might, the knowledge of just what she'd forgotten refused to surface.

Dan appeared to accept her denial at face value. "So, I was thinking…"

"Always dangerous words," Keri joked, hoping her growing inner unease didn't show on her face. She didn't want to worry Dan.

Dan chuckled. "Yeah, I know. But seriously, sweetie, I was thinking we could just scrap the whole big-wedding thing. How 'bout we elope to Vegas, instead?"

Keri laughed. "No! What brought this on?"

"Oh, nothing…just the fact that your brother scares the hell outta me. If we eloped, I know your friend, whassername, Jenny, and Sam would both be willing to come with us as witnesses."

Keri's laughter grew stronger, even as that persistent mosquito memory buzzed angrily in the back of her head. "Oh, come on! Brent actually _likes_ you, you know! Besides, Jenny's got her boards this week, so eloping is just not possible."

"Brent didn't threaten you with dismemberment by angle grinder if you broke his baby sister's heart, now did he?"

Keri smacked Dan's arm. "He did not!" That buzzing noise intensified for a nanosecond, accompanied by a flash of a dark hallway dripping with sheer terror. She brushed it out of her mind and leveled a lighthearted glare at her fiancé. "He did not," she repeated, though not with quite the conviction as her earlier declaration. "Did he?"

Dan grinned his bright, all-teeth grin. "He did! Last month when he came up and I had to suffer through that shoe-leather roast of your mom's."

Keri giggled. "Hey, I tried to warn you about eating Mom's cooking. I offered to take us all out that night, but _you_ insisted that 'no matter how bad it is, there's no way a homecooked meal could possibly be that bad'." Another mosquito buzz of memory – Dan's grin in the dark, only not framed by good cheer.

"You sure you're okay?"

"Yeah," she slurped the last of her drink off the ice in her glass. "Need a refill, but otherwise I'm fine."

"Refill sounds like a plan to me," Dan said, holding out his elbow in mock-gallantry.

Keri twined her arm through his and allowed herself to be escorted through the doorway.

As the pair of them left the golden sunset behind them and entered the bar, between one breath and the next, between one eye blink and the next, that damn mosquito buzz overwhelmed her mind, her senses.

The hallway was dim but not quite totally dark, thanks to the windows at either end. The lights inside the building hadn't worked for two days, but the streetlights outside were still working normally, and their orange glow made it possible to navigate the hallways and staircases without too much difficulty. It wouldn't have been a problem, but then that damn moan sounded from behind the door of an apartment on the third floor. Dan echoed the moan with eerie accuracy, even with the duct tape over his mouth. The answering moan was louder, and the sound of it made Dan completely _freak_. He jerked the short length of clothesline out of Keri's hand, causing the slipknot holding his arms behind his back to loosen.

A flash of teeth in the yellow lamplight.

Shouting for Brent.

That fucking moan again.

Teeth.

Pain.

A flash of light off a chef's knife, like some cheesy effect from an old Hitchcock film.

Blood.

The image hazed and was replaced by a different type of yellow glow. Her brother's bleary face filled Keri's field of vision. She had no idea what he was saying – the sounds coming her direction couldn't _possibly_ have come from Brent – but she knew that gesture of his; any time she'd ever been sick, it was the same thing, his had brushing ceaselessly through her hair until she fell back asleep. This time, he pressed something against her lips. Thirsty, she opened her mouth, but was only rewarded with the distinctive bitter taste of uncoated aspirin. Her displeasure must have shown itself to her brother, because the next item up for taking was a glass of lukewarm water. The glass disappeared before she'd had a chance to drink her fill, but that didn't really register. All her thoughts seemed to be coated in grease and slipped just out of reach as she made a grab for them. Before long, she quit trying and allowed her eyes to drift shut again.

And it was probably one of the most beautiful days Keri had ever seen. Except for the mosquitoes.

* * *

**A/N2:** And now I've a poll of sorts for you – just some general intel to help me point this fic in the proper direction. On a scale of one to five (where one is not at all and five is OMG, I can't see this story continue without them), could y'all please rate how much you like each of the following potential victims…um, I mean characters?

Mark  
Miguel  
Joe  
Al  
Martha  
Brent

(And yes, there's a reason why Sam, Dean, Heidi, Keri, and Brooks weren't on this list.)

Reviews in this instance will, if you've followed the instructions above, actually help me figure out a whole bunch of tiny, trifling details (like who among my secondary characters will survive), so please help contribute to the welfare of this zombie!apocalypse and send me your opinions.


	7. Chapter 7

**Disclaimer:** This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by Max Brooks; various publishers including, but not limited to, Three Rivers Press, Crown Publishing Group, and Random House, Inc. This story is also based on characters and situations created and owned by the writers, producers, et al of the television show 'Supernatural', including, but not limited to, the CW network and Eric Kripke. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, internet persona, or other being, living or dead, is completely coincidental and unintentional unless otherwise noted.

**A/N:** For the uninformed, Capri cigarettes are a little less than half the diameter of a traditional cigarette (though they're about the same length) and, like Virginia Slims and Misty, tend to be smoked almost exclusively by older women. And 'rollies' are roll-your-owns, which are traditionally smoked by people who don't have the extra cash to burn (in my experience, this has been an equal split between college geeks and temp factory or construction workers). Oh, and need I mention that opinions held by characters aren't necessarily held by their writers? Just sayin'…

Just a reminder: This tale is completely AU. It takes place while Sam's at Stanford, before he met Jessica.

This story is rated M for language, gore, and violence. Happy reading!

* * *

**Redefining Perceptions of Insanity**

**Chapter Seven**

Heidi jerked awake, the vividness of her nightmare fading into hazy memory as her eyes opened to reveal a painfully dark bedroom that smelled of lavender and that nasty perfume from Avon that only old people seemed to like. Though her dream had rapidly retreated beyond her ability to recall, it took several minutes for her pulse to slow. Mark mumbled something as she extracted herself from the double bed. "Shh…Just have to pee. Go back to sleep." Mark settled back into the numerous pillows covering the bed, clutching one to his chest. Heidi sighed a little and wished that the streetlights outside were still working; trying to dress by feel was always a challenge.

She managed to get her t-shirt on before deciding that was enough – she didn't feel like trying to wriggle back into those leather pants. _Besides,_ she thought, _I don't really think any of the others are really gonna care all that much. That's even if they're awake._ She found the Bic lighter in her pants pocket and lit the vanilla-scented jar-candle Mark had brought with him into the bedroom. Heidi stepped into the hall and heard Martha's distinctive snores coming from the apartment's second bedroom. She knew that Al and Joe were sleeping on the floor in there, too, just like how that new guy was sleeping on the loveseat in the living room. She figured the others – Sam, Dean, Miguel, and Vanderhaven – were probably crashed on the floor in the living room.

On reaching the living room, she saw that she was mostly right. Sam, Dean, and Brooks were sleeping soundly; both Winchesters were on the floor and Brooks was coiled up like a cat on the loveseat. Miguel was awake and reading a cheesy romance novel by the light of a single candle. Brent was sitting on the sofa, his sister's head in his lap, and Heidi didn't envy the crick he would have in his neck on waking.

"Can't sleep?" Miguel whispered, setting the book aside.

Dean stirred at the sound, lifting his head off his pillow (stolen from the loveseat) and looking around for a moment before smirking at Heidi's choice of wardrobe and flopping back onto the pillow. Heidi shrugged in response to Miguel's question. "Bad dreams." She carefully picked her way over the sprawled limbs of the Winchesters. "Any of those sandwiches left?"

Miguel shook his head, "No, but there's still some soda."

"I guess that'll have to do," Heidi whispered as she stepped into the kitchen. It didn't take long at all to locate an unopened can of orange soda. Grimacing at the overly-sugary flavor (but barely noticing that it was room-temperature), Heidi drained half of it in one go. _Wish there was some caffeine handy. The headaches are starting to become excruciating. _Wondering if maybe the apartment's owner – _New guy said his mom lived here, right?_ – kept coffee or something similar on hand, she started poking around in the cabinets. _I'd give my right foot for some Red Bull. And my left one for a pack of smokes._ She sighed a little when none of the overhead cupboards yielded much more than empty shelves and dishes.

Heidi finished off the soda and sat the empty can with the others from dinner before resuming her search in the cabinets below counter-level. She found a small, folding step-stool and a stack of tupperware bowls under the sink with several different bottles of cleaners, a collection of pots and pans in the second cupboard, and a collection of board games in the third. The last portion of counter was supported by a stack of drawers. The top one held a massive and motley collection of silverware. The second drawer had boxes of aluminum foil, plastic wrap, waxed paper, and so on. The third drawer had assorted cooking utensils like spatulas, wooden spoons, and measuring cups, and the bottom drawer held dishrags. She sighed, this time through her nose, and was about to close the drawer when a familiar scent had her pulling the cloths out of the drawer.

_Halle-fucking-lujah._

Previously hidden by the piles of cloth was a small glass ashtray with 'Howard Johnson' printed across the bottom, four unopened packs of Capris, and one open pack, along with a gold zippo-style lighter, a bottle of lighter fluid, and a little plastic yellow card that still had three flints on it. She seized the open pack and found that there were still fourteen cigarettes in it. Smiling, she seated herself on the counter in front of the open window and took a moment to tie the curtains out of the way. She lit one of the cigarettes off her candle and breathed deep. Milliseconds later, the nicotine rush hit her brain and she leaned against the window frame. _God, that's better. Been a while since I got that swimmy-in-the-head feeling. It may not be a Winston, but smoking a toothpick is better than nothing at all._

Staring out at the too-clear stars, her thoughts turned from smoking and her near-desperate need for caffeine to other matters. _I wonder what's going to happen now? I mean, everything's different, and not just the whole walking-dead thing. We've all been thrown back in time at least a century, maybe more. How are we going to live? I know mankind has dealt with no electricity and a lack of indoor plumbing for the vast majority of history, but all of us now are so used to having those conveniences that we don't really know how to deal with not having them. I know it's going to take me forever to get used to the fact that light switches and outlets are now basically just there for decoration, to say nothing of the fact that I now know I've spent the last seven years working towards a goal that has turned out to be utterly pointless. What use is an electrical engineer when the electricity no longer flows? Why worry about designing a computer circuit when the fucking _dead_ are up and wandering around?_ She finished the cigarette and lit a second off the first before tossing the butt out the open window.

_And to top it all off, my wonderful plan of actually being popular for a change has likewise been a complete waste of time. What use is being pretty or popular now? Most of the people I knew are probably dead. I wish I could go back in time and have a little chat with myself from just before freshman year in high school. I'd like to let myself know that my dreams aren't going to amount to anything more than wasted time. Maybe give myself a chance to learn something useful. Take up skeet-shooting or something. Anything to make me feel less useless right now._

_Hell, maybe I should just climb down to the street and let those fuckers take me down. It'd be better than being dead weight._ In the starlight, she could see one of _them_ shuffling down the middle of the street. Despite her thoughts, she stilled and prayed that the zombie wouldn't realize she was there. Luck – or whatever was passing for it lately – was with her; the zombie continued on its way without letting loose one of those godawful moans.

_Mark's a good guy. Maybe not the kind of guy I would have picked for myself six weeks ago, and definitely not the kind of guy I would have been caught dead with in high school, but a good guy nonetheless. He's definitely smarter than average, even if he did admit his grades weren't all that stellar – I mean, he got accepted to Stanford, not just some random community college, so he's definitely got brains. But what use are grades now? He's actually got a chance – he's got the kind of skills that are currently needed. He can fix shit and he knows how to shoot, even if he hasn't had to yet. I'm sure that when this is over – if it's ever over – he'll be successful at whatever he winds up doing._

"Mind if I join you?"

Heidi jumped a little at the sudden voice. It wasn't loud enough to carry very far, but was slightly more substantial than a whisper. She glanced over and saw that it was the new guy. "Suit yourself," she replied, flicking the second butt out the window. She turned and dangled her feet off the edge of the counter when he made a motion for her to scoot over.

"My mom used to smoke those," Brent said, nodding to the open pack of Capris she held.

"'Used to'?" Heidi asked, a slight smirk on her face.

"Yeah," Brent replied, digging into his jeans pocket and coming up with a smallish metal box. "She quit when Keri's nagging got to be too much. About a year ago now." He opened the box to reveal a dwindling collection of filters, rolling papers, and a nearly-empty packet of Top. He glanced over at Heidi while his fingers went about the business of rolling a cigarette. "What?"

Heidi held up the pack of smokes she'd found. "I got these out of the drawer with all the dishcloths in it."

Brent let out an amused huff, "Good on Mom, then."

"You smoke rollies?"

"Yeah," Brent nodded, looking down. He paused long enough to wet the glue on the paper before continuing, "They're cheap. I also don't tend to smoke as much, since there's actual work involved."

"No need to worry about the 'cheap' part now, though."

Brent closed the little box and stuck it back in his pocket. "True enough," he said around the filter. Heidi handed him her lighter. "But quitting would probably be a good idea," he punctuated his comment by lighting his newly-rolled smoke. "You have any idea how shitty all the tobacco is going to taste after a month or two of just sitting?"

Heidi took her lighter back and only hesitated a moment or two before lighting another slightly stale Capri. "That's assuming we live that long."

"Well aren't you just a pleasant little ray of sunshine."

"I tend to get that way when the entire fucking world's teetering on the edge of total failure."

"So it's not just here? I mean, not just the US?"

Heidi shook her head, "No. Far as Brooks and Sam have been able to tell, it all started in Morocco before spreading to Europe. Sam says the first cases showed up here somewhere along the coast of Georgia, back on the first."

Brent let out a low whistle. "Damn. Less than three weeks ago?"

Nodding, Heidi said, "Yeah. My guess is that our wonderful network of trans-continental flights is how it spread so fast."

"That sounds like more than just a guess."

Heidi sighed. "It's not." She stared at the glowing ember of her half-smoked cigarette for several minutes before Brent made a little noise in the back of his throat. Though he hadn't really said anything, she could tell he wanted to hear the 'why' behind that particular statement. "My mom's always been the 'take a walk' type whenever anything was bothering her. Uncle Max had been diagnosed with cancer – he's married to mom's sister – and Mom flew to New York to stay with Aunt Marie for a couple of weeks. She would have stayed longer, but Mom didn't like having to take unnecessary time off from her work. Anyway, I'm sure she took a lot of walks during the two weeks she was in Manhattan.

"When she got back on the third, she claimed she'd gotten mugged during one of those walks – she had a bite on her hand and a few nasty-looking bruises. Dad took her in to the hospital, said that bites, especially bites from people, weren't anything to screw around with. The ER cleaned it out and sent her home with a couple of prescriptions. By suppertime, she was running a fever, but she took some Ibuprofen and the pills the hospital prescribed for her. She'd laughed with Dad, saying how he just had to _always_ be right." She finished her smoke and tossed the butt out the window. "She had a seizure that night. The ambulance woke me up. If she'd not spent the previous two weeks with my aunt and uncle, I probably wouldn't have been home at the time – I usually stayed in the dorm. But the siren woke me up and I went with Dad as he followed the ambulance back to the hospital.

"We stayed there, waiting, nearly all day. I remember thinking that it was a good thing that it was Friday – it meant I only missed one class, instead of the three I have the rest of the week, and how I had a date on Saturday that I didn't want to miss. I was so _sure_ that whatever it was that Mom had, the doctors would fix it. She died just before two o'clock that afternoon. Dad… He asked for some time alone with her. I… I don't know what I was doing at the time, I remember wondering if this meant I had to cancel my date. I guess I was in denial or something. But Dad got his time alone with Mom. I don't know how long he was in the room with her before I heard him shout, but I remember opening the door and seeing blood and Mom, still connected to some of the machines, out of bed and crouched over Dad. I don't remember what happened next, the next thing I know for sure, I was paying a cabbie and climbing the short set of stairs that lead to the back door of my dorm." She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "It wasn't much later that everything everywhere started going to hell in a hand basket."

Brent didn't really know what to say in response, and so he kept quiet.

* * *

By seven o'clock the next morning, everyone was awake (in most cases, unwillingly so) and chewing their way through cereal topped with reconstituted canned milk. Of the entirety of the group, only Al had yet to make any sort of comment about the milk being too sweet or too warm. Dean figured it probably had something to do with the necessarily odd hours the former fireman had kept Before. Even Keri had managed to come-to, and the relief with which Brent met her still-fevered but lucid questions had morphed into irritating good cheer; which Dean didn't mind…much. _If it'd been Sammy, I'm sure I'd've been the same._

As breakfast chatter began to die down, Brooks gave Keri another shot of antibiotic, and Sam handed out multivitamins like they were parade-candy giveaways. Mark and Dean stood out on the fire escape, scanning the immediate area for a suitable replacement for the tow-truck. They hadn't been outside longer than five minutes or so before Brent elbowed his way onto the crowded platform. He took a seat on the stairs that lead up to the next floor and settled into rolling himself a smoke while Mark and Dean passed the a pair of binoculars back and forth. "Not to interrupt or anything, but just what're you doing?" Brent asked as he lit his cigarette.

"Tryin' like hell to find another ride," Mark replied, peering through the field glasses at the stretch of road leading up to the nearest on-ramp for I-80.

Dean was looking in the same direction. "What about that van, about halfway under the overpass?"

Brent took a deep breath of his smoke. "That's better, at least. Now if we could just find some coffee, I just might be able to wake up all the way for once."

Dean snorted out an amused chuckle, "I hear that."

Mark shook his head, "No. Well, yes to the coffee, but no on the van. Windshield's busted out and three of the tires are flat."

"You don't really need to be doing that, you know," Brent said, blue-grey smoke giving a temporary physical shape to his words.

"Yeah, we do. Were runnin' with a tow-truck, but the damn thing ain't gonna run for too awful much longer. Need a replacement." Mark handed the binoculars back to Dean and scrubbed a hand over his eyes.

"No, man, you really don't. I got a truck. Still has most of a full tank of gas in her, too."

Some inner fragment of Dean recognized the fellow car-geek (though he'd strangle anyone who called it that to his face) undertone to the statement. He swung the binoculars around to stare at a blurry and horribly-magnified eyebrow. "Please don't tell me you're a Ford man."

Brent laughed – a full-on, side-splitting belly laugh – and when it calmed enough for him to speak, he managed, "Fuck, no! I got me an '02 Ram, crew-cab, four-wheel-drive, the whole nine yards." His honestly amused grin morphed slightly to something more bittersweet. "Suppose I don't hafta worry none about the bank takin' her back if I miss a payment now, huh?" He took one last drag off his cigarette and tossed the butt off the rail.

"Guess not," Dean replied. "Just where're you parked, though? I don't see your truck anywhere out here."

"Resident lot, just off the alley that runs behind the buildings. Mom hasn't owned a car since I was six, so when I visit, I get her parking place."

The truck was all that Brent had promised and more. It practically towered over the crowded little parking lot, sandwiched between a mid-eighties Japanese import and a rather rusted Cadillac of indeterminate vintage. She was a dark blue-green color that shimmered slightly in the early morning sunlight; closer inspection revealed that the paint was a metallic flake, likely custom since it didn't _quite_ match the paint on the inside edge of the doors. A large metal toolbox was bolted to the bed just under the rear window and a heavy-duty roller bar, complete with a line of high-powered lights mounted to it, arched up a few inches over the cab. A winch attached to the front of the truck completed the picture.

Brent took a moment to move the accumulated whatnot from the back seat to the bed – included in this was a tackle box, two fishing poles, and a camper's backpack. At the questioning look on Mark's face, Brent gave a little shrug. "I always loved the outdoors. Tended to take off to whatever state or national park was handy on my days off. I'd been planning on spending a week at Lake Tahoe when everything fell apart." Once the back seat was cleared, Brent and Mark helped Keri stretch out on the seat. Some cussing and maneuvering managed to coax the seat belts into keeping her secure – though she was conscious and could move around some on her own, she was still sick and weak; the antibiotics still needed time to kick the infection.

Once Keri was as comfortable as they could make her, Heidi climbed into the passenger seat and Mark hoisted himself into the bed of the truck. Though Brent didn't really need her to, Heidi directed him to where the others had parked. To his surprise, the rest of their rag-tag group were simply milling around their vehicles. The tall, skinny one – _What was his name again? Bob? Brian? B-something, I know that much_ – with the attitude problem was the only exception; he was seated on a mid-sized black motorcycle with an impatient look visible on his face through his helmet's face-shield.

Brent pulled up next to the shiny black muscle car and rolled down his window. "Waitin' on anything in particular?"

Dean smirked and thrust a rag and a bottle of Windex through the truck's window. "You've got a mess of peanut butter to clean up. Then we can get going."

Brent took the items and stared at Dean. "You're kidding, right?"

"Do I look like I'm kidding?" Dean made a 'get on with it' motion with his hands before rejoining the cluster of people gathered around the hood of his car.

Brent looked to Heidi, "He's joking, right?"

Heidi slowly shook her head. "Don't think so. Best hurry, though. I don't like it much when we have to stop for long."

Shaking his head a little, Brent shut off the truck and climbed out. He found that not _everyone_ was huddled around the hood of the car – it had only seemed that way. The black guy – _Joe, I think_ – and Al were sitting in the back seat. Joe flashed him a broad grin and said something he couldn't hear to Al, who cracked up. _Wonder what that's all about?_ Figuring he probably didn't want to know, Brent set to clearing the fly-covered mass of brown glop off of Dean's windshield. While scrubbing the sugary, oily mass off the window, he listened to the conversation happening around the map on the other side of the hood from where he stood.

"Right now, it looks like our best bet is still the Bay Bridge. The upper deck looks nearly deserted, even though the lower deck is cram-packed. I'm not too sure about that tunnel, though," Dean said.

Miguel leaned over and inspected the map a little more closely. "We can go around it, if it's that worrying to you, but I'd rather not. We know the bridge is clear – the military was using it – but I don't know about the roads on Yerba Buena. They could be deserted or they could be as bad as the Golden Gate. Hey, Sam?"

"Yeah?"

"Didn't that evacuation listing last week say that I-80 was being kept clear all the way to Sacramento?"

Sam nodded thoughtfully, "I think so. Something about a refugee camp at Travis Air Force Base, if I'm remembering it right."

"You are. I remember that broadcast. They were still doing some music then." Martha supplied.

Dean let out a little sigh. "Fine, we'll wait and see when we get there. If it's clear – no problem. If not, then we're going to have to try the island roads to go around." He started folding up the map while Sam got into the car and Miguel and Martha mounted their bikes. Brent finished cleaning the windshield and headed for the truck. "You catch all that?" Dean called after him.

Brent turned and spoke, walking backwards the remaining distance to his truck. "Yeah, though I don't think it matters much. Figured I'd just follow you."

"You haven't even asked where we're going."

Brent shrugged. "Doesn't matter to me. Anywhere's gotta be better than a city of the walking dead," he replied, opening the truck door and climbing inside.

_Gotta admit, he's got a point_, Dean thought as he slid behind the wheel of the Impala.

Amid the strangely symphonic sound of the assorted motors starting, Sam wrestled down an urge to grin. _Looks like Dean's still a little claustrophobic. Still maintain that's why he never flies anywhere._

With the Impala in the lead, followed by the three motorcycles and Brent's truck, they made their way onto Interstate 80. The on-ramp had once been guarded, but all that remained of the military presence was an abandoned Hummer painted a sand-brown color. As they got closer to the bridge itself, it became apparent that the abandoned vehicles on the lower deck had likely been there since before the army had tried to evacuate the San Francisco area. The upper deck was totally clear. And Dean needn't have worried about the state of the tunnel on Yerba Buena – it was as creepily deserted as the rest of the bridge.

After the first few miles passed without incident, Dean added a little more speed; creeping up from twenty to thirty-five to fifty as the miles passed. The lack of other traffic and the bright sunshine coupled with the faint sound of Pink Floyd on the tape deck had Dean almost able to convince himself that the past two years hadn't happened and that it was still that last beautiful summer before Sam had run off to try for his apple-pie life. Almost. The sight of the rest of their group following him every time he glanced in the rear-views was enough to halt the daydream in its tracks.

A little over an hour after they'd finally managed to leave San Francisco behind, Sam sighed and tossed the map on the dashboard. "Might as well flip a freakin' coin. There's no way to say whether or not the back roads are going to be clear, but I'm sure they'll be better than the damn interstates."

"If I had my way, we'd be taking dirt roads all the way to Joshua's," Dean said. "Dad and I were working a case in Salinas – had it narrowed down to a…" he trailed off when he saw both Joe and Al looking his direction in the rear-view mirror. "Anyway, we were down in Salinas when it all fell apart. Watched a couple of thousand of those damn things work their way down the traffic jam of folks waiting to get on the main artery out of town. Fucking zombie buffet is what it was…" Sam didn't much care for the undertone in Dean's voice – _He's blaming himself for something._ Dean cleared his throat and continued, "That's when Dad said it was time to go get you. We were down to just thirty iron rounds between the two of us, and somewhere between forty and sixty silver. Neither of us had any lead left…" He trailed off and Sam's thoughts took off again. _No, it's not blame he's doing to himself. Guilt, maybe? But why? Surely, he can't think that he and Dad could have took on an entire town's worth of zombies by themselves. But, then again, that's probably _exactly_ what he's thinking_. Sometimes, Sam just plain couldn't understand his brother.

"Hey, what's that?" Joe piped up from the back seat.

"What's what?" Sam asked, looking to him.

Joe pointed forwards, through the windshield, and off slightly to the right. "That."

Sam and Dean both looked in the direction Joe indicated. "Looks like smoke," Dean said.

"A _lot_ of smoke," Sam added.

About five minutes later, they found out that 'smoke' was right. Travis Air Force Base and the surrounding town of Fairfield were nothing more than a ruin of still-smoldering embers with patches of singed fields where parks once stood. Thick banks of smoke wafted across the interstate, forcing the collection of travelers to move at a more moderate pace. Al stared out the window, simultaneously appalled and entranced by the level of destruction. "What happened, do you think?" he asked.

Dean shifted his gaze to the rear-view mirror. "No clue."

"Dean!" Sam nudged his brother's arm to shift his attention back to the road.

A large, shadowy mass had materialized out of the smoke, walking along the rightmost lane of the interstate. "Shit," the older Winchester grumbled, hitting his breaks and swerving to the left. He put the car in park. Without needing to confirm with one another, both Winchesters quickly had their pistols in hand and were climbing out of the car even as the rest of their motorcade pulled to a stop behind them.

"Hey!" Sam shouted. The shadow broke into two small forms and one larger blob. The two smaller headed quickly in their direction, barking.

"Beauty! Beast! Get back here!" The remaining shadow split almost precisely in half.

A downdraft of cleaner air split the thick haze of smoke. Two black-and-tan German shepherds were sprinting towards Sam and Dean, followed somewhat more slowly by a teenaged boy and slightly younger girl. In the split-second he had to assess the situation, Dean figured that the threat level was negligible. He had yet to see any sort of proof that the undead issue crossed species boundaries. The boy yelled at the dogs again, but it didn't stop the pair of rambunctious canines from bounding up to Dean, their tails wagging hard enough to make their entire bodies wiggle.

The kids skidded to a halt several yards from the Winchesters. Sam saw how the boy's eyes darted from the dogs to Dean and back several times before drifting to take in the sight of the Impala parked next to the three idling motorcycles and in front of the pickup. After several moments of tense silence, the kid looked at the dogs again and whistled sharply. The larger of the two shepherds let out one last happy yip and retreated to stand between the boy and girl. The second dog continued barking and wagging at Dean. The boy sighed. "You might as well pet her, she won't leave you alone otherwise."

Dean checked the safety on his gun and tucked it back into his waistband before crouching to pet the dog. "She got a name?"

"Yeah. She's Beauty, and this one's Beast. I'm Dave Abrams, by the way, and this is my sister, Melody."

"Dean," he replied and jerked his chin in Sam's direction, "and Sam. Where you headed?"

"Away from here," Melody said.

Beauty licked a stripe down the side of Dean's face and rejoined her people. She wondered if these new people had any jerky left. The one she'd licked tasted like he might have some hidden away somewhere close. Beast had taken a seat, his tail curled neatly around his paws as though to make a point that names weren't everything. Unaware of the thoughts running around inside the dogs' heads, Dean grimaced and wiped the dog-drool off his face. "Away from here just so happens to be where we're headed. You two need a lift?"

The boy reached down and patted the top of Beast's head, obviously weighing his options. While he thought, Sam looked the pair over. They were in sorry shape – the boy's jeans were singed, the girl had a nasty-looking bruise on her arm, and both of them were covered in enough soot to make a chimneysweep proud. The girl wore a pink-and-gray backpack that was obviously stuffed as full as it could get without bursting the zipper and pulled a wheeled piece of red carry-on luggage behind her. The boy had a much sturdier-looking backpack cinched over his ash-crusted denim jacket. In his left hand, he carried a rifle. Sam was pretty sure it was a .30-30 and figured it had probably belonged to the kids' dad. Even under the dirt and grime, it was easy enough to see that they were related. Both had eyes the same shade of blue-green and hair that was somewhere between red and brown in color.

Dave seemed to come to a decision and asked, "How many you got with you?"

"Eleven in total, counting myself," Dean replied.

"You mind if Beauty and Beast meet everyone before I say one way or the other?"

Dean shrugged and made a 'be my guest' motion with his hands. As was normal, Sam had kept his distance from the dogs – they didn't always like him, much to his eternal dismay. Sam and Dean shared a quick glance and they lead the two kids and their pets over to the Impala. Ignoring the fact that it made him think of the times he'd seen police searches, Dean opened the back doors one after the other to allow the dogs to 'meet' Al and Joe while Sam resumed his place in the passenger seat. Al received an even more enthusiastic greeting from Beauty than Dean did (the former fireman had to wipe both sides of his face when she was done with him). Joe got sneezed on by Beast, but the dog seemed honestly apologetic about it. Joe gave him a cursory pat as consolation before the kids and dogs were lead to the truck. An unconscious Keri received the most unusual reaction from either dog; Beauty whined at her and Beast had tried to climb into the cab. The girl, Melody, mentioned, "She must be sick," to explain their behavior.

To finish off the introductions, the group approached the motorcycles. While the dogs were making their acquaintance with Miguel and Martha, Dean heard Brooks say, "Smart kid."

"Whacha mean by that?" Dean asked.

Dave was close enough to hear the question. "Well, none of you made them go Cujo on you, so I figure we're probably safe enough."

Seeing the expression on Dean's face, Brooks clarified, "Most dogs can tell if you've been bitten, even if the wound's hidden and you don't feel sick."

Dean filed that tidbit of information away and figured it was probably a very good thing they'd run into the kids and their pets. Once the foursome was added to the bed of the pickup, the group – now totaling thirteen people and two canines – continued following I-80 towards Sacramento. They turned off the interstate about ten miles outside the greater Sacramento area, in a town called Davis.

For the first time since leaving San Francisco behind, the undead were obviously apparent, shambling their way along the streets. The streets themselves were oddly clear; only a few cars were parked along them and Dean had yet to see any wrecks, even on the side streets they passed. Sam was back to examining a map (this one pulled from the impressive collection of local maps Dean had kept and stored in a folder under the seat) and directing Dean to a county road that would eventually lead in the direction they needed to go.

For all that the zombies meant they had to go a little more slowly than Dean would have liked through the town proper, they still went fast enough that none of the ex-humans could keep up with them. In the bed of Brent's truck, Dave and Melody had to enlist Mark's help in keeping Beauty and Beast from leaping out and attacking the zombies they drove past. Still, even with the zombies, they made good time and it wasn't until they had actually left Davis behind them that they came across trouble.

With fields of crops that would likely never be harvested on either side of the two-lane blacktop and deep, water-filled ditches forming the boundaries between field and road, the wreck which halted their forward momentum wasn't easily surmounted.

"Can't we find a way around?" Joe asked.

Sam looked up from his map, "We could, but it might take an hour or more."

Dean didn't bother looking away from the wreck. An old pickup truck had met an SUV head-on and the twisted frames angled across both lanes of the highway. On the other side of the wreck, he could see another car – a station wagon – had come on the wreck unawares and had skidded to a halt, just barely missing the wreck itself. "Come on, it's just three cars. It's not like there's a dozen of the damn things." Dean maneuvered the Impala to one side, making room for the pickup.

Brent moved the truck up so that it was about thirty feet from the wreck and angled it so that the winch could haul the car carcasses out of the way. He hit the release button for the winch and rolled his window down. "I got it," Mark said, hopping down from the bed.

"Need a hand?" Miguel asked, climbing off his bike. He really just needed to get off the bike for a bit; his ass was numb.

"Sure," Mark replied.

Back in the bed of the truck, both dogs perked up as a light breeze blew from the direction of the wreck. Both began growling softly. Alarmed, Dave stood and leaned around the cab of the truck, holding on to the roller bar for balance. Mark, trailing the cable from the winch, and Miguel were already at the wreck. Dean and Sam were in the process of climbing out of the nifty-looking black car. "Hey!" he shouted.

Mark turned around, but before he could do anything else, the one sound he'd hoped never to hear again sounded loud, clear, and _far_ too close for comfort.

Dave watched things happen almost as though it were happening in slow-motion.

As the moan sounded, a pair of blood-encrusted hands reached out from under the remains of the SUV and jerked on Miguel's legs. Miguel lost his balance as the force caused his knees to buckle and hit his head on a jutting protrusion of crumpled silver metal. Mark dropped the winch cable and scrambled backwards from the wreck, nearly falling himself as his feet tangled in the cable. Dean and Sam, the latter not even bothering to close the car door behind him, raised their pistols and sprinted the short distance to the wreck before skidding to a halt a few feet from it. Beauty's growls escalated into snarls and Beast began barking loudly. From the boneless way Miguel hit the ground, Dave was positive that he'd knocked himself out when he hit the SUV. Though Sam and Dean had their guns leveled at the space under the wreck, neither wanted to take a shot and risk hitting Miguel. Moving together – the only thing Dave could compare it to was how his sister and her partner had moved during their last dance competition – the pair stepped closer to Miguel. Bending down, Dean took Miguel's left arm and Sam took the right. From his vantage point, Dave could see that the zombie still had hold of Miguel's legs. An unclear shadow looked like it was trying to chew through the leather boots. Dean and Sam pulled on Miguel, but couldn't budge the guy. The zombie seemed to give up on the boot and reached higher on Miguel's legs. Sam and Dean pulled again and with a loud squelching rip, they finally managed to drag Miguel and the clinging zombie away from the wreck. The zombie – who had once been an older man, likely a farmer of some sort – pulled itself further up Miguel, moving faster than Dave expected. It was also trailing intestines and other innards out behind it like a Slinky Dog from hell. Simultaneously, Sam and Dean dropped Miguel's arms and brought their pistols up – again, Dave could only compare their movements to his sister and her dance partner. The zombie, unaware of its rapidly-approaching doom, finally found a bit of tasty flesh to exploit and sank its teeth into Miguel's neck. Tandem pistol shots echoed out over the countryside and the zombie's head seemed to explode in a shower of gelatinous goop and bits of shiny bone.

Dave gagged and had to force himself not to throw up at the sight. Sure, he'd seen plenty of undead, but he hadn't been there when it all went down at the refugee camp. This was worse than the goriest video games he'd ever played, all because it was _real_.

* * *

**A/N2:** **the music lady** rec'd _Dead Man Kinda Shambling_ in her review of chapter six, which I'm passing along here:

kellifer (dash) fic (dot) livejournal (dot) com (slash) 156186 (dot) html

The line that really got me was said by Sam to Dean: _"You're dead _and_ a hypochondriac."_

(If you have trouble getting there by using the above address, try doing a Google search for the fic title – it was how I had to get there and it took a couple of links to connect through to the fic itself.)

Oh, and yeah, the dogs are a total homage to the '06 remake of _The Hills Have Eyes_ – which I likewise have nothing to do with (other than enjoying the film, of course).

Reviews help me write more quickly! Hell, this chapter probably would have taken another week or two if I'd not reread my reviews from last chapter when I got up this morning.


	8. Chapter 8

**Disclaimer:** This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by Max Brooks; various publishers including, but not limited to, Three Rivers Press, Crown Publishing Group, and Random House, Inc. This story is also based on characters and situations created and owned by the writers, producers, et al of the television show 'Supernatural', including, but not limited to, the CW network and Eric Kripke. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, internet persona, or other being, living or dead, is completely coincidental and unintentional unless otherwise noted.

**A/N:** Kripke owns my soul. Just so you know.

Just a reminder: This tale is completely AU. It takes place while Sam's at Stanford, before he met Jessica.

This story is rated M for language, gore, and violence. Happy reading!

This is also my 'chapter of death', so I hope y'all enjoy!

* * *

**Redefining Perceptions of Insanity**

**Chapter Eight**

"Get the kit, Sammy," Dean ordered, scrambling to shove the remains of the zombie off of Miguel.

Sam turned on his heel to do just that, only to find his path blocked by Melody and one of the dogs. The dog sniffed him and let out an odd noise, a cross between a whimper and a growl. "Hush it, Beauty," Melody said, not moving her gaze from Sam's eyes. The girl slowly shook her head and reached for the nickel-plated Taurus nine-millimeter Sam still held in his hand.

"Where's that damn kit, Sam!" Dean was now putting pressure on the spurting wound in Miguel's neck.

"It's too late for that," Melody said, "and you know it." Though she didn't speak loudly, her words carried easily to everyone watching. Carrying Sam's gun, she stepped around the taller Winchester and approached the hunched-over figure of Dean. Dean looked up when her shadow fell across him. "He's already dead," she met Dean's gaze with her own, and Dean had to forcibly suppress a rash of goosebumps at her expression. She leveled Sam's Taurus at Miguel's head. "Lucky for us, he's gonna stay that way." Melody braced her left wrist with her right hand and pulled the trigger. At a distance of only a couple of dozen inches, the slug didn't miss.

The biggest part of Dean was in shock at the events of the last sixty seconds, for that was about how long it had been since that freaking _moan_ had echoed out from under the wrecked SUV. A slightly smaller portion was highly unnerved that this girl – this _little_ _girl_ who didn't even have _tits_ yet – had just coldly dispatched someone that, had it not been a zombie-bite, _should have been savable_. And the smallest portion, which wouldn't have a chance to be heard until much later, was thinking that this _little girl_ would make one _hell_ of a hunter someday.

A stray breeze wafted the curling trail of smoke from the gun's barrel away into nothingness. With the last of the smoke, the girl's expression shifted subtly, losing the coldness and becoming once again the face of a twelve year-old who'd been forced to see things no one should ever have to see. Without saying anything more, she slowly turned around and walked back to the truck, returning the gun to Sam on her way.

Melody climbed back into the bed of the truck, seemingly unaware of the blinking stares leveled at her by everyone, including her brother. _What happened, sis? Is that it? That why you won't talk about what happened out at the base? Who was it, Mel – Kira? Rochelle? Andrea? Who _was_ it? _Dave suppressed the questions he wanted to ask and simply pulled her into a close hug.

Only a few yards away, Mark watched everything play out. _Is this how it starts?_ he mused, stooping to retrieve the cable from where he'd dropped it. _Is this how that metallic tang starts seeping in? Like Sandy? Like the Winchesters? It's like Dean's wrapped up in some sort of solid-iron armor. Sam's only a little less…sharp? Metallic? Like he's wearing chainmail, not full platemail._ He mentally snorted in amusement. _Who would've thought that _one_ class I had on medieval history would ever have this kind of application? And Sandy – she wasn't near so…whatever it is; more like tinfoil or the foil that gum comes in than anything of real _substance_. But that girl? She's getting there right quick; already scarier than Sandy ever was. So is this how it starts?_

While lost in his thoughts, Mark missed Dean's gaze shift from Melody to Miguel's body, before leveling off on his brother. Most of the others were staring after the girl, too, and likewise missed the quick byplay between the Winchesters – not that there was a whole lot to see, just Dean making a quick jerking motion with his chin towards the Impala and a quick nod on Sam's part – but Brooks and Al both noticed, and had to wonder what it meant.

They didn't have long to wait.

Sam returned to the car and grabbed the keys from the ignition. Joe tried to ask, "What's up?" but Sam didn't answer. The younger Winchester headed to the trunk and rummaged around. While Sam was busy with the trunk, Dean headed to the mangled cars blocking the road and peered under the wreckage before turning his attention to the contents of the vehicles.

One by one, the others (save Keri, who was sleeping soundly and had been completely unbothered by the gunshot) slowly exited or dismounted their respective vehicles. Without really meaning to, the Winchesters had managed to capture everyone's attention.

Dave, his arm still wrapped around his little sister's faintly-trembling shoulders, stood in the bed of Brent's pickup. Beauty and Beast sat at attention to either side of the siblings, like some odd sort of canine honor-guard. In front of the truck, Heidi had joined Mark. Their pose was a tad more intimate than that of the Abrams, but very similar nonetheless; the winch cable still dangled from Mark's left hand, his right wrapped around her waist. Al and Joe slowly made their way to where the pair stood, and halted a few feet from them, quickly joined by Martha and Brent. Brooks was the last to join the confused cluster of survivors and probably the only one among them who realized just what the red gas can in Sam's hand meant.

His personal suspicions were confirmed when Dean returned from his search of the wrecked cars with a couple of felted-wool fabric squares (roughly ten feet to a side, but folded neatly) – the kind used mainly as 'furniture pads' when moving, but which also could be thrown in the trunk of a car as 'emergency blankets' in a pinch. Brooks gave a silent nod of approval that nobody saw. _Good idea,_ he thought,_ though I wonder how they seem to be on the same page. I mean, it's not like solanum-reanimates were all that common until recently. Perhaps it's something to do with what Winchester told me back when that stupid Halloween poster showed up on our door. But still…they didn't even _talk_ about it._

The Winchesters paused next to Miguel, and even with the sound of the breeze rustling the vegetation to either side of the road, their quiet voices were heard loud and clear by their audience. Dean looked from his brother to the mess of blood and back. "I got this, Sammy."

"You sure?"

Though the group could hear the Winchesters, none really had a clear view of their faces, and as such couldn't see the expressions they sported. Sam's was caught somewhere between revulsion and a watery sort of resignation. Dean's expression would have been harder to pin down, but if one looked close enough, it was possible to see something best described as wanting to keep his brother from having to do the hard part, paired with a goodly dose of 'why', and beneath everything else, a slowly-growing flicker of determination. "Yeah," he said. "The pickup," he nodded towards the mid-seventies truck whose frame was pretzeled into and around the frame of the SUV, "has a load of brush in the bed. See if you can't get the civs to lend a hand. Set up back that way, 'bout a hundred yards behind Brent's truck."

"Gonna have to siphon some gas, first," Sam replied, holding up the gas can. "This is empty."

Dean frowned. "Try the station wagon. Pull from the fuel line under the car. The siphon hose disappeared six weeks ago and I haven't gotten around to replacing it yet."

Sam opened his mouth for a moment to ask why he should try the station wagon first, but then his eyes landed on the half-a-zombie whose guts trailed back under the wreck and suddenly understood. He snapped his mouth shut and gave a quick nod before stepping around his brother to head for the station wagon.

Dean sat the grey-brown 'blankets' down next to the two corpses before sighing slightly and heading purposefully towards the cluster of survivors. Dave smiled faintly at Dean's manner; at that moment, the older Winchester reminded him very strongly of some of the teachers he'd had at military school. Dean stopped a few feet from the group. "Mark? You and Brent should see about moving the wreck out of our way. Al and Joe – you two give Sam a hand. Brooks? You're with me." Dave's impression of Dean continued all through while the man was speaking. _It's sort of like how some of the shyer upperclassmen acted right at the beginning of the year; they weren't used to having any sort of authority, but still did what they were supposed to. Wonder which school he went to? Know it wasn't the Academy – I've seen all the pictures of the graduating classes of the last fifteen years or so and have a good memory for faces. He's not old enough to have graduated before then, but I know I didn't see him in any of the pictures._ Dave gave a mental shrug. _There's really too many schools out there to know for sure which he went to without asking. Maybe I'll ask after we stop for the night… We _are_ stopping for the night, right? Maybe I should talk to one of them before we get going again. Would be nice to know what's going on._

Had Dave been a little older than his sixteen years, he might have been more apt to peg Dean's general attitude as that of someone more accustomed to taking orders, rather than giving them; but as it stood, Dave could only make comparisons to what he already knew. Martha had a similar impression of the older Winchester brother, only she _had_ phrased her thoughts along these lines. The thought was fleeting, however, and what gathered more of her attention was the fact that neither she nor Heidi had been asked to help with anything. _Sweet kid,_ she thought, _if a little chauvinistic. I'm not exactly a damsel in distress here._ She glanced out the corner of her eye to where Heidi was watching Mark and Brent approach the entwined truck and SUV with exaggerated caution. _Though I appear to be the only one who isn't. _She gave herself a mental shake and strode forward to lend a hand.

On the other side of the mangled metal, Sam had wormed his way under the station wagon and stared at the innumerable hoses, pipes, and wires that snaked through the car's frame. _Which one's the fuel line?_

"Need a hand?" Joe asked, flopping onto the blacktop next to the car.

Sam startled hard enough to hit his head on some unidentifiable metal crosspiece. He hissed through his teeth and reached up to see if the metal had removed his brain, simply to find the only red on his forehead was a light dusting of rust flakes. "Uh…" Sam twisted his neck to see Joe. "You wouldn't happen to know which of these," he motioned to the aforementioned hoses, "is the fuel line, would you?"

"Hey, I don't even have a driver's license. How the hell would I know?"

"Great," Sam grumbled.

"It'd be the one attached to the gas tank, I imagine," Al said, following Joe's example in stretching out on the pavement. _Probably a lucky break that the car's a little high-centered, else we'd need the jack to see under it like this._

Sam managed not to startle a second time, much to his forehead's relief. He scanned the assorted whatnot attached to the underside of the car. "What's the gas tank look like?"

"Usually, something like a large, flattish metal balloon," Al replied. "Shape's usually something like a rectangle, but not always. It won't have any nuts or bolts in the main body – just along the edges where it's attached to the frame," he added the last sentence when he noticed Sam reaching for the car's oil pan.

With Al's assistance, Sam soon had the gas tank located, as well as the fuel line. It didn't take long for gravity to fill the small gas can. Sam kinked the hose to stop the flow of gas and used a forgotten paperclip from his pocket to make sure it wouldn't un-kink and cause a potential problem of the giant _booming_ kind later.

With Brooks' help, it didn't take more than five minutes to have Miguel's body transferred off the blacktop and onto one of the felted wool blankets Dean had found, and only a further five minutes to empty out his pockets. The nine-millimeter handgun Miguel had been carrying was tucked into Dean's waistband alongside his Colt, and the spare ammunition found its way into one of his many pockets.

While Mark and Brent set about moving the car carcasses out of the way and Dean and Brooks saw to disposing of the zombie, Martha tried to make herself useful however she could. As a result, the story of the wreck and its resident zombie came to light. Farmer Zed, as she mentally labeled the zombie, had been having truck problems (there were several containers of antifreeze, both full and empty, littering the cab of his truck). He'd stopped on the road to take care of the issue when the SUV came from the other direction and collided with the truck, pinning Farmer Zed between the two vehicles. When the cars were pulled apart, the lower half of the zombie was revealed, and even through the mangling the wreck put it through, Brooks had noticed the bite-mark on Farmer Zed's right calf – called it a 'slow-burn', the type of bite that could take up to seventy-two hours to 'manifest a full reanimate'. As to just why the SUV struck the truck in the first place was anybody's guess as no sign of its passengers or the driver were evident, but the force of the collision had been enough for the vehicles to wind up blocking both lanes of traffic. Some time after the first accident, the station wagon came on the scene and found its way blocked. Like with the SUV, there was no telling what had happened to the driver, and Martha had to wonder just why they hadn't tried turning around and going back the way they came.

Working together, it took Sam's group roughly twenty minutes to assemble enough of the brush from the wrecked truck into a suitable pyre. It took a little longer for the others to winch the wreck enough out of the way that they'd be able to get around it. As the others finished their tasks, Dean and Brooks finished up wrapping Miguel's corpse with the felted wool. When Dean added a thick layer of salt to both the body and between the wool layers, Brooks leveled an unmistakable 'What the _fuck_?' look at him. In reply, Dean merely shrugged and muttered, "We got enough problems to deal with." The comment only served to confuse Brooks further. Mentally promising himself to get the older Winchester to clarify that comment later, he helped Dean schlep the now-wrapped body of Miguel to the pile of gasoline-soaked brush centered on the double-solid-yellow stripe well behind Brent's pickup.

Dean pulled his Zippo from his pocket and flicked it. Heidi cleared her throat a little before he could touch the flame to the waiting brush. "What?" he asked.

"Shouldn't someone say something?" she asked.

The question triggered an uncomfortable exchange of glances among the cluster of survivors. Martha sighed, "Oh, for hell's sake. I don't know what to say, and it's been a fair few years since I attended a funeral, but…why not?" She took a deep breath and began singing in a surprisingly melodic alto. By the time she'd reached the end of the first line of _Amazing Grace_, most of the rest of the group had joined in. Even Sam was trying, though he mangled a few of the words.

Dean didn't even bother trying. He just licked his lips and waited impatiently for the song to end. When it finally did, he touched his lighter to the brush, which ignited with gasoline's customary _fwoop_ noise. He checked his watch to find that they'd wasted an entire hour dealing with both the wreck and Miguel. "Come on, people. Daylight's wastin'," he said.

Though the rest of the group could only hear the barked order, Sam knew his brother well enough to tell that what happened to Miguel was bothering Dean. Mark opened his mouth to protest, but Sam laid a hand on his shoulder and shook his head. "Just because you can't see it, don't mean he doesn't care. But he _is_ right. If we want to find a safe place to hole-up for the night, we'd best get a move on."

"Stop _already_?" Al asked, checking his own watch. "Hell, it's only just noon."

Sam nodded, his eyes still watching his brother as the older Winchester headed back to the Impala. "Not saying we'll stop right now," he replied. "Just that if we plan on finding a safe place for the night, we need to get going. Besides, I don't know about you, but I'm really wanting to make it to Joshua's place as quick as possible."

"You ain't never said, Winchester, but just what's so fuckin' special about this Joshua-dude's place?" Joe asked; his own eyes couldn't seem to tear away from the rapidly-charring figure in the flames.

Sam's eyes flickered over to Joe. A small smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. "You'll see when we get there."

* * *

About an hour later, the down-by-one group of survivors drew closer to I-505. As mile after mile unrolled before them, more cars became apparent. The closer to I-505 they came, the thicker the congestion became until Dean, growling a little under his breath, pulled to a stop where a gravel road crossed their two-lane blacktop.

"What's up?" Joe asked from his position behind Sam.

Sam shook his head, though Joe didn't know if it was in reply to his question or to the level glare Dean was shooting in his brother's direction. "I don't think we're going to be able to continue on this road, Dean. It's got an on-ramp to I-505 about four miles from here, and if this," he gestured to the abandoned vehicles littering the road, "is any indication, it'd be simpler to just find a way around."

"Agreed," Dean snapped, then stuck his head out his window. "Hey! Vanderhaven!"

A few minutes later, Brooks ambled up to the open window, a question etched on his face. "Winchesters?"

Dean jerked his chin to indicate the gravel cross-road, "You and Martha take lead here. Don't figure either of you'd want to eat our dust. Follow this south until we find something heading west. Got it?"

Brooks glanced around at the rapidly-dwindling available space on the paved road and nodded. It made sense. They didn't really have the time to deal with a major pile-up or choke-point, and that looked like what was ahead of them if they stayed on the highway. He headed back to his bike and relayed the message to Martha. At a hand-gesture from Dean, the pair of motorcycles took point and headed south on the gravel road.

While following the rooster-tails of dust kicked up by the motorcycles, Sam kept an eye out for any sort of marker that might give him a clue as to where they were heading. The gravel road wasn't marked on the map he'd been using to track their progress back on the highway. Eventually, Brooks' cycle's taillight came on, and the bike made an inadvisably-fast turn to the right. Martha had no trouble keeping up, and had it been audible over the noise from the engines, her laughing, wordless shout of glee would have garnered no few odd looks from her companions.

"Where the hell are we, Sammy?"

"Bob's Road?" Sam shot back, flipping through the few maps Dean had available of the area.

The comment managed to wrench a short snort of humor out of Dean – ever since _Twister_ had come out back in '96, instead of saying they were lost, Sam had taken to saying they were on 'Bob's Road'. "Find me somethin' better, Sam."

"I'm _trying_!"

It was hard for Dean not to hear the whiny ten year-old hiding in Sam's voice. The images it brought up were almost enough to shove aside what had happened to Miguel.

Almost.

By the time Sam finally figured out where they were, a new two-lane blacktop had appeared in the distance. Wonder of wonders, it even looked to be deserted.

Heading north on the two-lane that didn't even have a name on Sam's maps, they passed safely under I-505 about half an hour after getting back on the pavement. As the afternoon sunlight began to take on the golden hue of early evening, Sam had managed to navigate the caravan through several clusters of houses that claimed to be towns by virtue of having a map-dot.

Each 'town' they blew through had been creepily empty.

At about four-thirty, Brooks – he and Martha had been shunted back to between the pickup and the Impala when they'd hit pavement – sped up and drew alongside the Impala's driver-side window. He beeped the motorcycle's horn once to catch Dean's attention and then used his left hand to tap the gas-tank. Dean nodded.

"Looks like we need to find a place for gas," Dean said as Brooks fell back to his place behind the car.

"There's another town coming up in about five miles," Sam replied. "Cadenasso. Maybe there's a gas station."

Minutes later, they pulled to a stop at a gas station. Directly across the highway was a long-abandoned farmhouse. "You sure this is a town, Sam?" Al asked as he climbed out of the car's back seat.

Sam shrugged, "That's what the map says."

Were it not for the fact that the pumps were set up for credit-cards, and the three new-looking cars parked in spaces beside the building, Dean would have assumed the station had likewise been long-abandoned. "Don't know, don't care," he said. "Let's just gas up and get the hell out of here." He pulled his gun from his waistband and headed for the building.

The gas station's main building was little more than a largish cinderblock box, lacking even windows. The door was a heavy, steel contraption, which still had the keys dangling from the lock. "Hell," Dean muttered, "that can't be good."

"Hey, man," Joe was saying as he walked up behind Dean, "do you think they got some of that orange-flavored Mountain Dew?" Before Dean could stop him, Joe had twisted the keys and pulled the door open, "'Cause I'm fuckin' _parched_ and –"

Joe didn't get to say much else as a pair of large hands, caked in dried blood, shot out and grabbed his arm amid an unseen cloud of fetid decaying stench. Dean, reacting purely on instinct, raised his gun and backed up quickly. The sound of screaming almost downed out the racket of zombie-moans and the squelch of flesh being torn apart.

Most of the rest of the group came running – Brent stayed with Keri, and Melody grabbed hold of the dogs' collars to keep them from getting in the way.

Moments later the screaming stopped.

Dean, Sam, Martha, Brooks, and the kid, Dave, all had guns leveled at the door. The moaning from the other side was muffled, but loud enough that everyone present knew there were more than just a few of the fuckers hiding inside.

Al, his heart beating somewhere behind his tongue, shivered as the undead started banging on the door. His eyes caught sight of the keys, still resting in the lock, and suddenly, his pulse began to slow. "Excuse me," he whispered, stepping around Brooks.

The door rattled in its frame as Al hurried up to it and twisted the keys back to the 'locked' position. He then removed them and hurled them as far away from the building as he possibly could. As the rest of his companions blinked at him, he shrugged. "What? Did you honestly want to fight the damn things?"

"Joe was in there," was all Dean could say.

Al swallowed and squared his shoulders. "Then it was already too late. Besides," he pointed to a painted-over square metal sign hung to the right of the door at eye-height, "I don't think we really want to deal with what's in there." Though obscured by the paint, the metal sign still bore the legend 'Public Fallout Shelter # 974 – Parking in Rear' stamped into it. "They were built during the Cold War. This one probably served all those blink-and-miss-it towns we've been passing through. Explains why no one was there."

It made sense. Particularly after Heidi jogged around to the side of the building and reported that there was a large lot, jam-packed with cars, on the far side.

* * *

Eventually, the string of vehicles managed to connect up with Highway 20. As early evening transitioned into true evening, Sam directed Dean to turn onto Leesville Road. Had the day been better, Dean would have found the road fun as it twisted and turned through switchbacks and hairpins through a mountainy area. But the day, for all it's blue sky and sunshine and puffy popcorn clouds, had been monumentally shitty.

Aside from Sam's quiet directions and the almost inaudible sound of Pink Floyd repeating over and over in the tape deck, the interior of the Impala was drenched in silence.

Brooks and Martha, as well, were silent, though more by necessity than because of the day's events.

In contrast, Brent's truck was almost obscenely cheerful – Keri's fever had broken and she was awake and upright, getting to know Heidi, while Brent (who would admit to being somewhat spooked over the deaths that day if asked, but _only_ if asked) sang along to a Tracy Byrd CD. In the bed of the truck, Mark and Dave had found some common ground – video games – and were chatting over the sound of the wind. Melody, her head pillowed on Beast and cuddled around Beauty, was sleeping.

After following Highway 20 for about forty minutes, the string of vehicles reached a small town slightly larger than the map-dots they'd already driven through by the name of Lodoga. As was had been the case way back in Davis, undead made themselves known as they tried to shamble after their preferred prey, but just couldn't move fast enough to keep up with the car, truck, and motorcycles, even when the vehicles had to move slow around stalled or abandoned cars in their path.

In the middle of town, the Impala made a left-hand turn onto Lodoga-Stonyford Road, and minutes later, the dead town was put to their rear-view mirrors. The new road angled northwest before changing to slightly more west than north. Dean slowed some and seemed to be looking for something.

Sam knew the pattern – he'd seen it often enough growing up, first shown by their dad and then by Dean after he'd begun driving. Dean was looking for a place to stop for the night. Sam knew the formula – a house by preference, not a trailer, at least three miles off the main road, and still hooked up to electric. He had to wonder if Dean would still look for the 'electric' part of the equation with circumstances being what they were.

So when Dean turned right onto a narrower-than-normal road, Sam was unsurprised. Obviously, his brother hadn't failed to miss the little signs pounded into the ditch either; the ones that read 'Now Leasing for the 2003 Season' and 'Lakefront Timeshares' and, probably most importantly, 'Model Homes Now Open'.

Before long, they crested a long hill to see a lakeside development all shiny and new and totally devoid of undead – unless some had wandered this way from Stonyford.

Noticing which houses were most likely to suit their needs – the model homes were the only ones with curtains at this point – Dean pulled into a cul-de-sac and parked so the Impala was facing back the way they came.

After securing their chosen house, Dean stood in a dining room furnished with a wooden table set in reddish wood and looked outside. The last dying rays of light from the setting sun were painting the landscape in tones of orange and gold.

"You okay?" Sam asked.

Dean shrugged. "Ask me again after we get to Joshua's." He tore his gaze from the window and yawned. "I don't know about you, dude, but it's been one fuckin' _hell_ of a long day for me."

Sam nodded in agreement as Dean headed for the living room and one of its pair of sofas. He took up Dean's position at the window and stared at all the newly-built homes and felt a pang of sadness at how they would never house people now; how they wouldn't get the chance to be a _home_.

* * *

**A/N2:** I didn't really want to kill off the black dude, but the character simply wasn't making himself useful. Sigh. Uncooperative characters really piss me off. Can you tell? Anyway, I know it's a little shorter than usual, but I wanted to get this out before another eight freakin' months went by. I promise the next chappie'll be longer to compensate.

And I'm beginning to seriously wonder if someone over at Show is reading this fic – I mean, tonight's episode (_99 Problems_)…the fire-truck's water-cannon…the baddie hiding under the car… It's enough to make me stop and go 'huh'. If so, I say YAY\o/ - if not, please, no one harsh my squee, 'kay?

I know it's been a while, but having to work for a living fuckin' sucks ass. Review, please, and give my mindless dronelike existence meaning.


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